Mr. Mulliner Speaking

MR. MUI .LINER SPEAKING

P. G .TODEHOUSE

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

THE STORY:

Mr. Mulliner is one of P. G. Wodehouse's happiest
creations — nothing can dull his sunny outlook on
4ife, nothing can "keep him down.” And nothing,
it may be said, will stop him from telling a talc when
he wants to. Fortunately, Mr. Mulliner is by no
means averse to the sound of his own voice, and the
result is a series of /cracious narratives which will
cause the most cross-grained pessimist to hold his
sides.

MR. MULLINER
SPEAKING

by

P. G. WODEHOUSE

HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
3 DUKE OF YORK STREET
ST. JAMES'S LONDON S.W.i.

First published by
Herbert Jenkins Ltd.
3 Duke of York Street ,
London , i

1921

Ninth punting t Jii'pletmg 64,550 copies

MADE AS'O PRISfTFD IV ORFAT HRITVTV BY PI’RVFI.I. AND SON^, I.TB.
PAt-’IAfi** (-.OMhR^l) ASP lOVFJOV

CONTENTS

CTTAl'. FAOR

I. The Reverent Wooing of Archi-
bald 9

II. The Man who gave up Smoking . 41

III. The Story of Cedric ... 74

IV. The Ordeal of Osbert Mulliner . 107

V. Unpleasantness at Bludleigh

Court 141

VI. Those in Peril on the Tee . . 174

VII. Something Squishy . . . 208

VIII. The Awful Gladness of the Mater 245

IX. The Passing of Ambrose . . 288

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

All the characters in Shis book are purely imaginary
and have no relation whatsoever to any living person.

MR. MULLINER
SPEAKING

i

THE REVERENT WOOING OF
ARCHIBALD

T HE conversation in the bar-parlour of
the Anglers’ Rest, which always tends
to get deepish towards closing-time,
had turned to the subject of the Modem Girl;
and a Gin-and-Ginger-Ale sitting in the comer
by the window remarked that it was strange
how types die out.

" I can remember the days,” said the Gin-
and-Ginger-Ale, *' when every other girl you
met stood about six feet two in her dancing-
phoes, and had as many curves as a Scenic
Railway. Now they are all five foot nothing
and you can't see them sideways. Why is
this? ”

The Draught Stout shook his head.

" Nobody can say. It's the same with dogs.
One moment the world is full of pugs as far

10

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

as the eye can reach ; the next, not a pug in
sight, only Pekes and Alsatians. Odd!”

The Small Bass and the Double- Whisky-
and-Splash admitted that these things were
very mysterious, and supposed we should
never know the reason for them. Probably
we were not meant to know.

'itf cannot agree with you, gentlemen,” said
Mr. Mulliner. He had been sipping his hot
Scotch and lemon with a rather abstracted
air: but now he sai up alertly, prepared to
deliver judgment. "The reason for the dis-
appearance of the dignified, queenly type of
girl is surely obvious. It is Nature's method
of ensuring the continuance of the species.
A world full of the sort of young woman that
Meredith used to put into his novels and du
Maurier into his pictures in Punch would be
a world full of permanent spinsters. The
modern young man would never be able
to summon up the nerve to propose to
them.”

"Something in that,” assented the Draught
Stout.

"I speak with authority on the point,”
said Mr. Mulliner, "because my nephew,
Archibald, made me his confidant when he
fell in love with Aurelia Cammarleigh. He
worshipped that girl with a fervour which
threatened to unseat his reason, such as it

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD n

was: but the mere idea of asking her to be
his wife gave him, he informed me, such a
feeling of sick faintness that only by means
of a very stiff brandy and soda, or some
similar restorative, was he able to pull himself
together on the occasions when he contem-
plated it. Had it not been for . . . But
perhaps you would care to hear the story
from the beginning? ”

People who enjoyed a merely superficial
acquaintance with my nephew Archibald
(said Mr. Mulliner) were accustomed to set
him down as just an ordinary pinheaded
young man. It was only when they came to
know him better that they discovered their
mistake. Then they realised that his pin-
headedness, so far from being ordinary, was
exceptional. Even at the Drones Club, where
the average of intellect is not high, it was
often said of Archibald that, had his brain
been constructed of silk, he would have been
hard put to it to find sufficient material to
make a canary a pair of cami-knickers. He
sauntered through life with a cheerful in-
souciance, and up to the age of twenty-five
had only once been moved by anything in
the nature of a really strong emotion — on
the occasion when, in the heart of Bond
Street and at the height of the London season,

12 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

he discovered that his man, Meadowes, had
carelessly sent him out with odd spats on.

And then he met Aurelia Cammarleigh.

The first encounter between these two
has always seemed to me to bear an extra-
ordinary resemblance to the famous meeting
between the poet Dante and Beatrice For-
tinari. Dante, if you remember, exchanged
no remarks with Beatrice on that occasion.
Nor did Archibald with Aurelia. Dante just
goggled at the girl. So did Archibald. Like
Archibald, Dante loved at first sight : and the
poet’s age at the time was, we are told, nine
— which was almost exactly the mental age
of Archibald Mullincr when he first set eye-
glass on Aurelia Cammarleigh.

Only in the actual locale of the encounter
do the two cases cease to be parallel. Dante,
the story relates, was walking on the Ponte
Vecchia, while Archibald Mulliner was hav-
ing a thoughtful cockiail in the window of the
Drones Club, looking out on Dover Street.

And he had just relaxed his lower jaw in
order to examine Dover Street more com-
fortably when there swam into his line of
vision something that looked like a Greek
goddess. She came out of a shop opposite the
club and stood on the pavement waiting for
a taxi. And, as he saw her standing there.

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 13

love at first sight seemed to go all over Archi-
bald Mulliner like nettlerash.

It was strange that this should have been
so, for she was not at all the sort of girl with
whom Archibald had fallen in love at first
sight in the past. I chanced, while in here the
other day, to pick up a copy of one of the old
yellowback novels of fifty years ago — the
property, I believe, of Miss Postlethwaite,
our courteous and erudite barmaid. It was
entitled Sir Ralph’s Secret, and its heroine,
the Lady Elaine, was described as a superbly
handsome girl, divinely tall, with a noble
figure, the arched Montresor nose, haughty
eyes beneath delicately pencilled brows, and
that indefinable air of aristocratic aloofness
which marks the daughter of a hundred Earls.
And Aurelia Cammarleigh might have been
this formidable creature’s double.

Yet Archibald, sighting her, reeled as if the
cocktail he had just consumed had been his
tenth instead of his first.

"Golly!” said Archibald.

To save himself from falling, he had
clutched at a passing fellow-member: and
now, examining his catch, he saw that it was
young Algy Wymondham-Wymondham. Just
the fellow-member he would have preferred
to clutch at, for Algy was a man who went
everywhere and knew everybody and could

i 4 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

doubtless give him the information he
desired.

"Algy, old prune,” said Archibald in a low,
throaty voice, " a moment of your valuable
time, if you don’t mind.”

He paused, for he had perceived the need
for caution. Algy was a notorious babbler,
and it would be the height of rashness to give
hirfl an inkling of the passion which blazed
within his breast. With a strong effort, he
donned the mask. When he spoke again, it
was with a deceiving nonchalance.

“I was just wondering if you happened to
know who that girl is, across the street there.
I suppose you don’t know what her name is
in rough numbers? Seems to me I’ve met her
somewhere or something, or seen her, or
something. Or something, if you know what
I mean.”

Algy followed his pointing linger and was
in time to observe Aurelia as she disappeared
into the cab.

"That girl?”

“Yes,” said Archibald, yawning. “Who
is she, if any?”

“Girl named Cammarlcigh.”

"Ah?” said Archibald, yawning again.
“Then I haven't met her.”

“ Introduce you if you like. She’s sure to
be at Ascot. Look out for us there.”

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD '' 15

Arcliibald yawned for the third time.

"All right,” he said, "I'll try to remember.
Tell me about her. I mean, has she any
fathers or mothers or any rot of that descrip-
tion? ”

"Only an aunt. She lives with her in Park
Street. She’s potty.”

Archibald started, stung to the quick.

"Potty? That divine. . . . I mean, that
rather attractive-looking girl? ”

"Not Aurelia. The aunt. She thinks Bacon
wrote Shakespeare.”

"Thinks who wrote what?” asked Archi-
bald, puzzled, for the names were strange to
him.

"You must have heard of Shakespeare.
He's well known. Fellow who used to write
plays. Only Aurelia’s aunt says he didn’t.
She maintains that a bloke called Bacon wrote
them for him.”

"Dashed decent of him,” said Archibald,
approvingly. " Of course, he may have owed
Shakespeare money.”

"There’s that, of course.”

"What was the name again?”

"Bacon.”

"Bacon,” said Archibald, jotting it down
on his cuff. " Right.”

Algy moved on, and Archibald, his soul
bubbling within him like a welsh rabbit at

16 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

the height of its fever, sank into a chair and
stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Then, rising,
he went oft to the Burlington Arcade to buy
socks.

The process of buying socks eased for
awhile the turmoil that ran riot in Archibald’s
veins. But even socks with lavender clocks
can only alleviate : they do not cure. Return-
ing to his rooms, he found the anguish rather
more overwhelming than ever. For at last
he had leisure to think : and thinking always
hurt his head.

Algy’s careless words had confirmed his
worst suspicions. A girl with an aunt who
knew all about Shakespeare and Bacon must
of necessity live in a mental atmosphere into
which a lame-brained bird like himself could
scarcely hope to soar. Even if he did meet
her — even if she asked him to call — even if in
due time their relations became positively
cordial, what then? How could he aspire
to such a goddess? What had he to offer
her?

Money?

Plenty of that, yes, but what was money?

Socks?

Of these he had the finest collection in
London, but socks are not everything.

A loving heart?

A fat lot of use that was.

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 17

No, a girl like Aurelia Cammarleigh would,
he felt, demand from the man who aspired
to her hand something in the nature of gifts,
of accomplishments. He would have to be
a man who Did Things.

And what, Archibald asked himself, could
he do? Absolutely nothing except give an
imitation of a hen laying an eggT

That he could do. At imitating a hen lay-
ing an egg he was admittedly a master. His
fame in that one respect had spread all over
the West End of London. “Others abide
our question. Thou art free,” was the verdict
of London’s gilded youth on Archibald
Mulliner when considered purely in the light
of a man who could imitate a hen laying an
egg. “Mulliner,” they said to one another,
“may be a pretty minus quantity in many
ways, but he can imitate a hen laying an

egg-”

And, so far from helping him, this one
accomplishment of his would, reason told
him, be a positive handicap. A girl like
Aurelia Cammarleigh would simply be sick-
ened by sir h coarse buffoonery. He blushed
at the very thought of her ever kerning
that he was capable of sinking to such
depths.

And so, when some weeks later he was
introduced to her in the paddock at Ascot

18 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

and she, gazing at him with what seemed
to his sensitive mind contemptuous loathing,
said:

"They tell me you give an imitation of a
hen laying an egg, Mr. Mulliner."

He replied with extraordinary vehemence:

"It is a lie — a foul and contemptible lie
which I shall track to its source and nail to
the counter.”

Brave words! But had they clicked? Had
she believed him? He trusted so. But her
haughty eyes were /ery penetrating. They
seemed to pierce through to the depths of
his soul and lay it bare for what it was —
the soul of a hen-imitator.

However, she did ask him to call. With
a sort of queenly, bored disdain and only
after he had asked twice if he might — but
she did it. And Archibald resolved that, no
matter what the mental strain, lie would
show her that her first impression of him
had been erroneous; that, trivial and vapid
though he might seem, there were in his
nature deeps whose existence she had not
suspected.

For a young man who had been super-
annuated from Eton and believed every-
thing he read in the Racing Expert’s column
in the morning paper, Archibald, I am bound

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 19

to admit, exhibited in this crisis a sagacity
for which few of his intimates would have
given him credit. It may be that love stimu-
lates the mind, or it may be that when the
moment comes Blood will tell. Archibald, you
must remember, was, after all, a Mulliner:
and now the old canny strain of the Mulliners
came out in him.

" Mcadowes, my man,” he said to Meadowes,
his man.

“Sir,” said Meadowes.

“It appears,” said Archibald, "that there
is — or was — a cove of the name of Shake-
speare. Also a second cove of the name of
Bacon. Bacon wrote plays, it seems, and
Shakespeare went and put his own name on
the programme and copped the credit.”

“Indeed, sir?”

"If true, not right, Meadowes.”

“Far from it, sir.”

“Very well, then. I wish to go into this
matter carefully. Kindly pop out and get
me a book or two bearing on the business.”

He had planned his campaign with infinite
cunning. He knew that, before anything
could be done in the direction of winning
the heart of Aurelia Cammarleigh, he must
first establish himself solidly with the aunt.
He must court the aunt, ingratiate himself
with her — always, of course, making it clear

20 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

from the start that she was not the one. And,
if reading about Shakespeare and Bacon could
do it, he would, he told himself, have her
eating out of his hand in a week.

Meadowes returned with a parcel of for-
bidding-looking volumes, and Archibald put
in a fortnight’s intensive study. Then, dis-
carding the monocle which had up till then
been *his constant companion, and substi-
tuting for it a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles
which gave him something of the look of
an earnest sheep, he set out for Park Street
to pay his first call. And within five minutes
of his arrival he had declined a cigarette on
the plea that he was a non-smoker, and had
managed to say some rather caustic things
about the practice, so prevalent among his
contemporaries, of drinking cocktails.

Life, said Archibald, toying with his tea-
cup, was surely given to us for some better
purpose than the destruction of our brains
and digestions with alcohol. Bacon, for
instance, never took a cocktail in his life, and
look at him.

At this, the aunt, who up till now had
plainly been regarding him as just another
of those unfortunate incidents, sprang to
life.

"You admire Pirnrurirtti i/fliillimr? ” she
asked eagerly.

21

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD

And, reaching out an arm like the tentacle
of an octopus, she drew him into a corner and
talked about Cryptograms for forty-seven
minutes by the drawing-room clock. In short,
to sum the thing up, my nephew Archibald,
at his initial meeting with the only relative
of the girl he loved, went like a sirocco. A
Mulliner is always a Mulliner. Apply the acid
test, and he will meet it.

It was not long after this that he informed
me that he had sown the good seed to such
an extent that Aurelia's aunt had invited
him to pay a long visit to her country house,
Brawstead Towers, in Sussex.

He was seated at the Savoy bar when he
told me this, rather feverishly putting him-
self outside a Scotch and soda: and I was
perplexed to note that his face was drawn
and his eyes haggard.

“But you do not seem happy, my boy,”
I said.

"I’m not happy.”

"But surely this should be an occasion for
rejoicing. Thrown together as you will be in
the pleasant surroundings of a country
house, you ought easily to find an opportunity
of asking this girl to marry you.”

“And a lot of good that will be,” said
Archibald moodily. "Even if I do get a
chance I shan’t be able to make any use of

22

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

it. I wouldn’t have the nerve. You don’t
seem to realize what it means being in love
with a girl like Aurelia. When I look into
those clear, soulful eyes, or see that perfect
profile bobbing about on the horizon, a
sense of my unworthiness seems to slosh me
amidships like some blunt instrument. My
tongtie gets entangled with my front teeth,
and all I can do is stand there feeling like a
piece of Gorgonzola that has been condemned
by the local sanitary' inspector. I’m going to
Brawstead Towers, yes, but I don’t expect
anything to come of it. I know exactly
what’s going to happen to me. I shall just
buzz along through life, pining dumbly, and
in the end slide into the tomb a blasted,
blighted bachelor. Another whisky, please,
and jolly well make it a double.”

Brawstead Towers, situated as it is in the
pleasant Weald of Sussex, stands some fifty
miles from London: and Archibald, taking
the trip easily in his car, arrived there in
time to dress comfortably for dinner. It
was only when he reached the drawing-room
at eight o’clock that he discovered that the
younger members of the house-party had
gone off in a body to dine and dance at a
hospitable neighbour’s, leaving him to waste
the evening tie of a lifetime, to the compo-

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 23

sition of which he had devoted no less than
twenty-two minutes, on Aurelia’s aunt.

Dinner in these circumstances could hardly
nope to be an unmixedly exhilarating func-
tion. Among the things which helped to
differentiate it from a Babylonian orgy was
the fact that, in deference to his known
prejudices, no wine was served to Archibald.
And, lacking artificial stimulus, he found the
aunt even harder to endure philosophically
than ever.

Archibald had long since come to a definite
decision that what this woman needed was
a fluid ounce of weed-killer, scientifically
administered. With a good deal of adroitness
he contrived to head her off from her favourite
topic during the meal: but after the coffee
had been disposed of she threw off all re-
straint. Scooping him up and bearing him off
into the recesses of the west wing, she wedged
him into a corner of a settee and began to tell
him all about the remarkable discovery which
had been made by applying the Plain Cipher to
Milton’s well-known Epitaph on Shakespeare.

"The one beginning * What needs my
Shakespeare for his honoured bones? ’ " said
the aunt.

"Oh, that one?” said Archibald.

"‘What needs my Shakespeare for his
honoured bones? The labour of an Age in

24 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

piled stones? Or that his hallowed Reliques
should be hid under a star y-pointing Pyra-
mid?’” said the aunt.

Archibald, who was not good at riddles,
said he didn’t know.

“As in the Plays and Sonnets,” said the
aunt, "we substitute the name equivalents
of the figure totals.”

"We do what?”

"Substitute the name equivalents of the
figure totals.”

"The which?”

"The figure totals.”

"All right,” said Archibald. "Let it go. I
daresay you know best.”

The aunt inflated her lungs.

"These figure totals,” she said, " are always
taken out in the Plain Cipher, j A equalling
one to Z equals twenty-four. The names are
counted in the same way. A capital letter
with the figures indicates an occasional varia-
tion in the Name Count. For instance, A
equals twenty-seven, B twenty-eight, until
K equals ten is reached, when K, instead of
ten, becomes one, and T instead of nineteen,
is one, and R or Reverse, and so on, until A
equals twenty-four is reached. The short or
single Digit is not used here. Reading the
Epitaph in the light of this Cipher, it be-
comes: ‘What need Verulam for Shake-

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 25

speare? Francis Bacon England's King be
hid under a W. Shakespeare? William Shake-
speare. Fame, what needst Francis Tudor,
King of England? Francis. Francis W.
Shakespeare. For Francis thy William Shake-
speare hath England’s King took W. Shake-
speare. Then thou our W. Shakespeare Francis
Tudor bereaving Francis Bacon Francis Tudor
such a tomb William Shakespeare.' "

The speech to which he had been listening
was unusually lucid and simple for a Baconian,
yet Archibald, his eye catching a battle-axe
that hung on the wall, could not but stifle a
wistful sigh. How simple it would have been,
had he not been a Mulliner and a gentleman,
to remove the weapon from its hook, spit
on his hands, and haul off and dot this
doddering old ruin one just above the imita-
tion pearl necklace. Placing his twitching
hands underneath him and sitting on them,
he stayed where he was, until just as the
clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour
of midnight, a merciful fit of hiccoughs on
the part of his hostess enabled him to retire.
As she reached the twenty-seventh "hie,” his
fingers found the door-handle and a moment
later he was outside, streaking up the stairs.

The room they had given Archibald was
at the end of a corridor, a pleasant, airy

26 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

apartment with French windows opening
upon a broad balcony. At any other time he
would have found it agreeable to hop out
onto this balcony and revel in the scents and
sounds of the summer night, thinking the
while long, lingering thoughts of Aurelia.
But what with all that Francis Tudor Francis
Bac«n such a tomb William Shakespeare
count seventeen drop one knit purl and set
them up in the other alley stuff, not even
thoughts of Aurelia could keep him from
his bed.

Moodily tearing off his clothes and donning
his pyjamas, Archibald Mulliner climbed in
and instantaneously discovered that the bed
was an apple-pie bed. When and how it had
happened he did not know, but at a point
during the day some loving hand had sewn
up the sheets and put two hair-brushes and
a branch of some prickly shrub between
them.

Himself from earliest boyhood an adept
at the construction of booby-traps, Archi-
bald, had his frame of mind been sunnier,
would doubtless have greeted this really
extremely sound effort with a cheery laugh.
As it was, weighed down with Verulams and
Francis Tudors, he swore for a while with
considerable fervour: then, ripping off the
sheets and tossing the prickly shrub wearily

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 27

into a corner, crawled between the blankets
and was soon asleep.

His last waking thought was that if the
aunt hoped to catch him on the morrow,
she would have to be considerably quicker
on her pins than her physique indicated.

How long Archibald slept he could not have
said. He woke some hours later with a vague
feeling that a thunderstorm of unusual
violence had broken out in his immediate
neighbourhood. But this, he realized as the
mists of slumber cleared away, was an error.
The noise which had disturbed him was not
thunder but the sound of someone snoring.
Snoring like the dickens. The walls seemed
to be vibrating like the deck of an ocean
liner.

Archibald Mulliner might have had a tough
evening with the aunt, but his spirit was not
so completely broken as to make him lie
supinely down beneath that snoring. The
sound filled him, as snoring fills every right-
thinking man, with a seething resentment
and a passionate yearning for justice, and he
climbed out of bed with the intention of
taking the proper steps through the recog-
nised channels. It is the custom nowadays
to disparage the educational methods of the
English public-school and to maintain that

28

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

they are not practical and of a kind to fit the
growing boy for the problems of after-life.
But you do learn one thing at a public-
school, and that is how to act when some-
body starts snoring.

You jolly well grab a cake of soap and
pop in and stuff it down the blighter’s throat.
Andr this Archibald proposed — God willing —
to do. It was the work of a moment with
him to dash to the washstand and arm him-
self. Then he moved softly out through the
French windows onto the balcony.

The snoring, he had ascertained, pro-
ceeded from the next room. Presumably this
room also would have French windows: and
presumably as the night was warm, these
would be open. It would be a simple task to
oil in, insert the soap, and buzz back un-
detected.

It was a lovely night, but Archibald paid
no attention to it. Clasping his cake of soap,
he crept on and was pleased to discover, on
arriving outside the snorer’s room, that his
surmise had been correct. The windows were
open. Beyond them, screening the interior
of the room, were heavy curtains. And he
had just placed his hand upon these when
from inside a voice spoke. At the same
moment the light was turned on.

"Who’s that?” said the voice.

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 29

And it was as if Brawstead Towers with all
its stabling, outhouses and messuages had
fallen on Archibald's head. A mist rose
before his eyes. He gasped and tottered.

The voice was that of Aurelia Cammarleigh.

For an instant, for a single long, sickening
instant, I am compelled to admit that Archi-
bald's love, deep as the sea though it was,
definitely wobbled. It had received a grievous
blow. It was not simply the discovery that
the girl he adored was a snorer that un-
manned him: it was the thought that she
could snore like that. There was something
about those snores that had seemed to sin
against his whole conception of womanly
purity.

Then he recovered. Even though this girl’s
slumber was not, as the poet Milton so beau-
tifully puts it, " airy light,” but rather
reminiscent of a lumber-camp when the
wood-sawing is proceeding at its briskest, he
loved her still.

He had just reached this conclusion when
a second voice spoke inside the room.

“I say, Aurelia.”

It was the voice of another girl. He per-
ceived now that the question “ Who's that?”
had been addressed not to him but to this
newcomer fumbling at the door-handle.

?o MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"I say, Aurelia,” said the girl complain-
ingly, “you’ve simply got to do something
about that bally bulldog of yours. I can’t
possibly get to sleep with him snoring like
that. He’s making the plaster come down
from the ceiling in my room.”

“I’m sorry,” said Aurelia. “I’ve got so
used to it that I don’t notice.”

"tVell, I do. Put a green-baize cloth over
him or something.”

Out on the moonlit balcony Archibald
Mulliner stood shaking like a blancmange.
Although he had contrived to m aintain his
great love practically intact when he had
supposed the snores to proceed from the
girl he worshipped, it had been tough going,
and for an instant, as I have said, a very
near thing. The relief that swept over him
at the discovery that Aurelia could still
justifiably remain on her pinnacle was so pro-
found that it made him feel filleted . He
seemed for a moment in a daze. Then he
was brought out of the ether by hearing his
name spoken.

“Did Archie Mulliner arrive to-night?”
asked Aurelia’s friend.

“I suppose so,” said Aurelia. “He wired
that he was motoring down.”

“Just between us girls,” said Aurelia's
Mend, “what do you think of that bird?”

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 31

To listen to a private conversation —
especially a private conversation between
two modern girls when you never know what
may come next — is rightly considered an
action incompatible with the claim to be a
gentleman. I regret to say, therefore, that
Archibald, ignoring the fact that he belonged
to a family whose code is as high as that of
any in the land, instead of creeping away
to his room edged at this point a step closer
to the curtains and stood there with his ears
flapping. It might be an ignoble thing to
eavesd rop, but it was apparent that Aurelia
L-ammarlcigh was about to reveal her candid
opinion of him: and the prospect of getting
the true facts — straight, as it were, from the
horse’s mouth — held him so fascinated that
he could not move.

"Archie Mulliner?” said Aurelia medita-
tively.

"Yes. The betting at the Junior Lip-
stick is seven to two that you’ll marry him.”

"Why on earth?”

"Well, people have noticed he’s always
round at your place, and they seem to think
it significant. Anyway, that's how the odds
stood when I left London — seven to two.”

"Get in on the short end,” said Aurelia
earnestly, " and you’ll make a packet.”

"Is that official? ”

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

32

"Absolutely,” said Aurelia.

Out in the moonlight, Archibald Mulliner
uttered a low, bleak moan rather like the
last bit of wind going out of a dying duck.
True, he had always told himself that he
hadn’t a chance, but, however much a man
may say that, he never in his heart really
believes it. And now from an authoritative
source he had learned that his romance was
definitely blue round the edges. It was a
shattering blow. He wondered dully how
the trains ran to the Rocky Mountains. A
spot of grizzly-bear shooting seemed indicated.

Inside the room, the other girl appeared
perplexed.

"But you told me at Ascot,” she said,
"just after he had been introduced to you,
that you rather thought you had at last met
your ideal. When did the good thing begin
to come unstuck?”

A silvery sigh came through the curtains.

"I did think so then,” said Aurelia wist-
fully. "There was something about him. I
liked the way his ears wiggled. And I had
always heard he was such a perfectly genial,
cheery, merry old soul. Algy Wymondham-
Wymondham told me that his imitation of a
hen laying an egg was alone enough to keep
any reasonable girl happy through a long
married life.”

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 33

“Can he imitate a hen? ”

"No. It was nothing but an idle
rumour. I asked him, and he stoutly denied
that he had ever done such a thing in his
life. He was quite stuffy about it. I felt
a little uneasy then, and the moment he
started calling and hanging about the house
I knew that my fears had been well-founded.
The man is beyond question a flat tyre and
a wet smack."

“As bad as that?"

"I’m not exaggerating a bit. Where
people ever got the idea that Archie Mul-
liner is a bonhomous old bean beats me. He
is the world’s worst monkey-wrench. He
doesn’t drink cocktails, he doesn’t smoke
cigarettes, and the thing he seems to enjoy
most in the world is to sit for hours listening
to the conversation of my aunt, who, as you
know, is pure goof from the soles of the feet
to the tortoiseshell comb and should long ago
have been renting a padded cell in Earls-
wood. Believe me, Muriel, if you can really
get seven to two, you are onto the best thing
since Buttercup won the Lincolnshire.”

“You don't say!"

“I do say. Apart from anything else, he’s
got a beastly habit of looking at me rever-
ently. And if you knew how sick I am of
being looked at reverently! Thev will do it,

34 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

these lads. I suppose it’s because I’m rather
an out-size and modelled on the lines of
Cleopatra.”

"Tough!”

"You bet it’s tough. A girl can't help her
appearance. I may look as if my ideal man
was the hero of a Viennese operetta, but I don’t
feel that way. What I want is some good
sprfghtly sportsman who sets a neat booby-
trap, and who’ll rush up and grab me in his
arms and say to mq. 'Aurelia, old girl, you’re
the bee’s roller-skates ! ’ "

And Aurelia Cammarleigh emitted another
sigh.

"Talking of booby-traps,” said the other
girl, "if Archie Mulliner has arrived he’s in the
next room, isn’t he? ”

" I suppose so. That’s where he was to be.
Why?”

"Because I made him an apple-pie bed.”

"It was the right spirit,” said Aurelia
warmly. "I wish I’d thought of it myself.”

"Too late now.”

"Yes,” said Aurelia. "But I’ll tell you
what I can and will do. You say you object
to Lysander’s snoring. Well, I’ll go and pop
him in at Archie Mulliner's window. That’ll
give him pause for thought.”

"Splendid,” agreed the girl Muriel. “Well,
good night.”

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 35

'" Good night," said Aurelia.

There followed the sound of a door closing.

There was, as I have indicated, not much
of my nephew Archibald’s mind, but what
there was of it was now in a whirl. He was
stunned. Like every man who is abruptly
called upon to revise his entire scheme of
values, he felt as if he had been standing on
top of the Eiffel Tower and some practical
joker had suddenly drawn it away from
under him. Tottering back to his room, he
replaced the cake of soap in its dish and sat
down on the bed to grapple with this amaz-
ing development.

Aurelia Cammarleigh had compared herself
to Cleopatra. It is not too much to say that
my nephew Archibald’s emotions at this
juncture were very similar to what Marc
Antony’s would have been had Egypt’s
queen risen from her throne at his entry and
without a word of warning started to dance
the Black Bottom.

He was roused from his thoughts by the
sound of a light footstep on the balcony out-
side. At the same moment he heard a low
woofly gruffle, the unmistakable note of a
bulldog of regular habits who has been
jerked out of his basket in the small hours and
forced to take the night air.

36

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

" She is coming, my own, my sweet I
Were it never so airy a tread.

My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed "

whispered Archibald’s soul, or words to that
effect. He rose from his seat and paused for
an instant, irresolute. Then inspiration
descended on him. He knew what to do, and
he did it.

Yes, gentlemen, in that supreme crisis of
his life, with his whole fate hanging, as you
might say, in the balance, Archibald Mulliner,
showing for almost the first time in his career
a well-nigh human intelligence, began to give
his celebrated imitation of a hen laying an

egg-

Archibald’s imitation of a hen laying an
egg was conceived on broad and sympathetic
lines. Less violent than Salvini's Othello, it
had in it something of the poignant wistful-
ness of Mrs. Siddons in the sleep-walking
scene of Macbeth. The rendition started
quietly, almost inaudibly, with a sort of
soft, liquid crooning — the joyful yet half-
incredulous m urmur of a mother who v can
scarcely believe as yet that her union has
really been blessed, and that it is indeed

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 37

she who is responsible for that oval mixture
of chalk and albumen which she sees lying
beside her in the straw.

Then, gradually, conviction comes.

"It looks like an egg,” one seems to hear
her say. "It feels like an egg. It's shaped
like an egg. Damme, it is an egg! ”

And at that, all doubting resolved, the
crooning changes; takes on a firmer note;
soars into the upper register; and finally
swells into a maternal paean of joy — a
" Charawk-chawk-chawk-chawk ” of such a
calibre that few had ever been able to listen
to it dry-eyed. Following which, it was
Archibald’s custom to run round the room,
flapping the sides of his coat, and then, leap-
ing onto a sofa or some convenient chair, to
stand there with his arms at right angles,
crowing himself purple in the face.

All these things he had done many a time
for the idle entertainment of fellow-members
in the smoking-room of the Drones, but never
with the gusto, the brio, with which he per-
formed them now. Essentially a modest man,
like all the Mulliners, he was compelled,
nevertheless, to recognise that to-night he
was surpassing himself. Every artist knows
when the authentic divine fire is within him,
and an inner voice told Archibald Mulliner
that he was at the top of his form and giving

38 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

the performance of a lifetime. Love thrilled
through every " Brt-t’t-t't " that he uttered,
animated each flap of his arms. Indeed, so
deeply did Love drive in its spur that he
tells me that, instead of the customary once,
he actually made the circle of the room
three times before coming to rest on top of
the* chest of drawers.

When at length he did so he glanced
towards the window and saw that through
the curtains the loveliest face in the world
was peering. And in Aurelia Cammarleigh's
glorious eyes there was a look he had never
seen before, the sort of look Kriessler or some-
body like that beholds in the eyes of the
front row as he lowers his violin and brushes
his forehead with the back of his hand. A
look of worship.

There was a long silence. Then she spoke.

"Do it again!" she said.

And Archibald did it again. He did it
four times and could, he tells me, if he had
pleased, have taken a fifth encore or at any
rate a couple of bows. And then, leaping
lightly to the floor, he advanced towards her.
He felt conquering, dominant. It was his hour.
He reached out and clasped her in his arms.

"Aurelia, old girl,” said Archibald Mul-
liner in a clear, firm voice, "you are the bee’s
roller-skates."

THE WOOING OF ARCHIBALD 39

And at that she seemed to melt into his
embrace. Her lovely face was raised to
his.

"Archibald!” she whispered.

There was another throbbing silence,
broken only by the beating of two hearts
and the wheezing of the bulldog, who seemed
to suffer a good deal in his bronchial tubes.
Then Archibald released her.

"Well, that's that,” he said. "Glad
everything’s all settled and hotsy-totsy.
Gosh, I wish I had a cigarette. This is the
sort of moment a bloke needs one.”

She looked at him, surprised.

"But I thought you didn’t smoke."

"Oh yes, I do.”

"And do you drink as well?”

"Quite as well,” said Archibald. "In fact,
rather better. Oh, by the way.”

"Yes?”

"There’s just one other thing. Suppose
that aunt of yours wants to come and visit
us when we are settled down in our little nest,
what, dearest, would be your reaction to the
scheme of soaking her on the base of the
skull with a stuffed eelskin?”

"I should like it,” said Aurelia warmly,
“above all things.”

"Twin souls,” cried Archibald. "That’s
what we are, when you come right down to

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

40

it. 1 suspected it all along, and now I know.
Two jolly old twin souls." He embraced her
ardently. "And now,” he said, "let us pop
downstairs and put this bulldog in the
butler’s pantry, where he will come upon
him unexpectedly in the morning and doubt-
less get a shock which will do him as much
good as a week at the seaside. Are you
on?*

"I am," whispered Aurelia. "Oh, I am!”

And hand in hand they wandered out
together onto the broad staircase.

II

THE MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING

I N a mixed assemblage like the little group
of serious thinkers which gathers nightly
in the bar-parlour of the Anglers' Rest it
is hardly to be expected that there will
invariably prevail an unbroken harmony.
We are all men of spirit: and when men of
spirit, with opinions of their own, get together,
disputes are bound to arise. Frequently,
therefore, even in this peaceful haven, you
will hear voices raised, tables banged, and
tenor Permit-me-to-inform-you-sir’s compet-
ing with baritone And-j oily- well-permit -me-
to-inform-ytm’s. I have known fists to be
shaken and on one occasion the word "fat-
head” to be used.

Fortunately, Mr. Mulliner is always there,
ready with the soothing magic of his per-
sonality to calm the storm before things have
gone too far. To-night, as I entered the
room, I found him in the act of intervening
between a flushed Lemon Squash and a

4 »

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

42

scowling Tankard of Ale who had fallen foul
of one another in the corner by the window.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he was saying in
his suave, ambassadorial way, "what is all
the trouble about?”

The Tankard of Ale pointed the stem of his
pipe accusingly at his adversary. One could
see tfiat he was deeply stirred.

"He’s talking Rot about smoking.”

“I am talking sense.”

" I didn’t hear any.”

" I said that smoking was dangerous to the
health. And it is.”

"It isn’t.”

"It is. I can prove it from my own per-
sonal experience. I was once,” said the
Lemon Squash, "a smoker myself, and the
vile habit reduced me to a physical wreck.
My cheeks sagged, my eyes became bleary,
my whole face gaunt, yellow and hideously
lined. It was giving up smoking that brought
about the change.”

"What change?” asked the Tankard.

The Lemon Squash, who seemed to have
taken offence at something, rose and, walking
stiffly to the door, disappeared into the night.
Mr. Mulliner gave a little sigh of relief.

"I am glad he has left us,” he said.
"Smoking is a subject on which I hold strong
views. I look upon tobacco as life’s out-

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 43

standing boon, and it annoys me to hear these
faddists abusing it. And how foolish their
arguments are, how easily refuted. They
come to me and tell me that if they place two
drops of nicotine on the tongue of a dog the
animal instantly dies : and when I ask them if
they have ever tried the childishly simple
device of not placing nicotine on the dog's
tongue, they have nothing to reply. They are
non-plussed. They go away mumbling some-
thing about never having thought of that.”

He puffed at his cigar in silence for a few
moments. His genial face had grown grave.

"If you ask my opinion, gentlemen,” he
resumed, "I say it is not only foolish for a
man to give up smoking — it is not safe. Such
an action wakes the fiend that sleeps in all of
us. To give up smoking is to become a
menace to the community. I shall not
readily forget what happened in the case of
my nephew Ignatius. Mercifully, the thing
had a happy ending, but ..."

Those of you (said Mr. Mulliner) who move
in artistic circles are possibly familiar with
the name and work of my nephew Ignatius.
He is a portrait-painter of steadily growing
reputation. At the time of which I speak,
however, he was not so well-known as he is
to-day, and consequently had intervals of

44 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

leisure between commissions. These he occu-
pied in playing the ukulele and proposing
marriage to Hermione, the beautiful daughter
of Herbert J. Rossiter and Mrs. Rossiter, of
3 Scantlebury Square, Kensington. Scantle-
bury Square was only just round the corner
from his studio, and it was his practice, when
he liad a moment to spare, to pop across,
propose to Hermione, get rejected, pop back
again, play a bar or. two on the ukulele, and
then light a pipe, put his feet on the mantel-
piece, and wonder whai it was about him that
appeared to make him distasteful to this
lovely girl.

It could not be that she scorned his honest
poverty. His income was most satisfactory.

It could not be that she had heard some-
thing damaging about his past. His past
was blameless.

It could not be that she objected to his looks
for, like all the Mulliners, his personal appear-
ance was engaging and even — from certain
angles — fascinating. Besides, a girl who had
been brought up in a home containing a father
who was one of Kensington’s leading gar-
goyles and a couple of sub-humans like her
brother Cyprian and her brother George would
scarcely be an exacting judge of male beauty.
Cyprian was pale and thin and wrote art-
criticism for the weekly papers, and George

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 45

was stout and pink and did no work of any
kind, having developed at an early age con-
siderable skill in the way of touching friends
and acquaintances for small loans.

The thought occurred to Ignatius that one
of these two might be able to give him some
inside information on the problem. They
were often in Hermione’s society, and it was
quite likely that she might have happened to
mention at one time or another what it was
about him that caused her so repeatedly to
hand the mitten to a good man’s love. He
called upon Cyprian at his flat and put the
thing to him squarely. Cyprian listened
attentively, stroking his left side-whisker with
a lean hand.

"Ah?” said Cyprian. "One senses, does
one, a reluctance on the girl’s part to enter-
tain one’s suggestions of marriage?”

" One does,” replied Ignatius.

" One wonders why one is unable to make
progress? ”

"One does.”

"One asks oneself what is the reason?”

' ‘ One does — repeat edly . ’ ’

"Well, if one really desires to hear the
truth,” said Cyprian, stroking his right
whisker, "I happen to know that Hermione
objects to you because you remind her of my
brother George.”

46 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Ignatius staggered back, appalled, and an
animal cry escaped his lips.

"Remind her of George?"

"That’s what she says.”

"But I can’t be like George. It isn’t
humanly possible for anybody to be like
George.”

"0ne merely repeats what one has heard.”

Ignatius staggered from the room and,
tottering into the Fulham Road, made for
the Goat and Bottle to purchase a restora-
tive. And the first person he saw in the
saloon-bar was George, taking his elevenses.

"What ho!” said George. "What ho,
what ho, what ho!”

He looked pinker and stouter than ever,
and the theory that he could possibly re-
semble this distressing object was so dis-
tasteful to Ignatius that he decided to get a
second opinion.

"George,” he said, "have you any idea
why it is that your sister Hermione spurns
my suit? ”

"Certainly,” said George.

"You have? Then why is it? ”

George drained his glass.

"You ask me why?”

"Yes.”

"You want to know the reason? ”

"I do.”

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 47

"Well, then, first and foremost,” said
George, "can you lend me a quid till Wed-
nesday week without fail? ”

“No, I can't.”

"Nor ten bob?”

"Nor ten bob. Kindly stick to the subject
and tell me why your sister will not look
at me.”

"I will,” said George. "Not only have you
a mean and parsimonious disposition, but she
says you remind her of my brother Cyprian.”

Ignatius staggered and would have fallen
had he not placed a foot on the brass rail.

" I remind her of Cyprian? ”

“That’s what she says.”

With bowed head Ignatius left the saloon-
bar and returned to his studio to meditate.
He was stricken to the core. He had asked
for inside information and he had got it, but
nobody was going to make him like it.

He was not only stricken to the core, but
utterly bewildered. That a man — stretching
the possibilities a little — might resemble
George Rossiter was intelligible. He could
also understand that a man — assuming that
Nature had played a scurvy trick upon him —
might conceivably be like Cyprian. But how
could anyone be like both of them and live?

He took pencil and paper and devoted him-
self to making a list in parallel columns of the

48 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

qualities and characteristics of the brothers.
When he had finished, he scanned it care-
fully. This is what he found he had written :

George

Face like pig
Pimples

Confirmed sponger
Says “What ho!”
Slaps backs
Eats too much
Tells funny stories
Clammy hands

Cyprian

Face like camel
Whiskers

Writes art -criticism
Says "One senses”
Has nasty, dry snigger
Fruitarian
Recites poetry
Bony hands

He frowned. The mystery was still un-
solved. And then he came to the last item.

George Cyprian

Heavy smoker Heavy smoker

A spasm ran through Ignatius Mulliner.
Here, at last, was a common factor. Was
it possible . . . ? Could it be . . . ?

It seemed the only solution, and yet
Ignatius fought against it. His love for
Hermione was the lodestar of his life, but next
to it, beaten only by a short head, came his
love for his pipe. Had he really to choose
between the two?

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 49

Could he make such a sacrifice?

He wavered.

And then he saw the eleven photographs of
Hermione Rossiter gazing at him from the
mantelpiece, and it seemed to him that they
smiled encouragingly. He hesitated no longer.
With a soft sigh such as might have proceeded
from some loving father on the Steppes of
Russia when compelled, in order to ensure his
own safety, to throw his children out of the
back of the sleigh to the pursuing wolf-pack,
he took the pipe from his mouth, collected
his other pipes, his tobacco and his cigars,
wrapped them in a neat parcel and, summon-
ing the charwoman who cleaned his studio,
gave her the consignment to take home to
her husband, an estimable man of the name
of Perkins who, being of straitened means,
smoked, as a rule, only what he could pick up
in the street.

Ignatius Mulliner had made the great
decision.

As those of you who have tried it are aware,
the deadly effects of giving up smoking rarely
make themselves felt immediately in their
full virulence. The process is gradual. In
the first stage, indeed, the patient not only
suffers no discomfort but goes about inflated
by a sort of gaseous spiritual pride. All

SO MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

through the morning of the following day,
Ignatius, as he walked abroad, found himself
regarding such fellow-members of the com-
munity as had pipes and cigarettes in their
mouths with a pitying disdain. He felt like
some saint purified and purged of the grosser
emotions by a life of asceticism.^ He longed
to tgll these people all about pyridine and the
intense irritation it causes to the throats and
other mucous surfaces of those who inhale the
tobacco smoke in wh- ; ch it lurks. He wanted
to buttonhole men sucking at their cigars and
inform them that tobacco contains an appreci-
able quantity of the gas known as carbon
monoxide, which, entering into direct com-
bination with the colouring matter of the
blood, forms so stapV? a compound as to
render the corpuscles incapable of carrying
oxygen to the tissues. He yearned to make it
clear to them that smoking was simply a
habit which with a little exercise of the will-
power a man could give up at a moment's
notice, whenever he pleased.

It was only after he had returned to his
studio to put the finishing touches to his
Academy picture that the second stage
set in.

Having consumed an artist’s lunch con-
sisting of two sardines, the remnants of a
knuckle of ham- and a bottle of beer, he found

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 51

stealing over him, as his stomach got onto
the fact that the meal was not to be topped
off by a soothing pipe, a kind of vague sense
of emptiness and bereavement akin to that
experienced by the historian Gibbon on
completing his Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire. Its symptoms were an inability to
work and a dim feeling of oppression, as if he
had just lost some dear friend. Life seemed
somehow to have been robbed of all motive.
He wandered about the studio, haunted by
a sensation that he was leaving undone some-
thing that he ought to be doing. From time
to time he blew little bubbles, and once or
twice his teeth clicked, as if he were trying
to close them on something that was not
there.

A twilight sadness had him in its grip. He
took up his ukulele, an instrument to which,
as I have said, he was greatly addicted, and
played “ 01’ Man River” for awhile. But the
melancholy still lingered. And now, it
seemed to him, he had discovered its cause.
What was wrong was the fact that he was not
doing enough good in the world.

Look at it this way, he felt. The world is
a sad, grey place, and we are put into it to
promote as far as we can the happiness of
others. If we concentrate on our own selfish
pleasures, what do we find? We find that

52 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

they speedily pall. We weary of gnawing
knuckles of ham. The ukulele loses its
fascination. Of course, if we could sit down
and put our feet up and set a match to the
good old pipe, that would be a different matter.
But we no longer smoke, and so all that is
left to us is the doing of good to others. By
threj o'clock, in short, Ignatius Mulliner had
reached the third stage, the glutinously senti-
mental. It caused him to grab his hat, and
sent him trotting .round to Scantlebury
Square.

But his object was not, as it usually was
when he went to Scantlebury Square, to
Topose to Hermione Rossiter. He had a
more unselfish motive. For some time past,
by hints dropped and tentative remarks
thrown out, he had been 1 matlTawnre that
Mrs. Rossiter greatly desired him to paint
her daughter’s portrait: and until now he
had alway s turned to these remarks and hints
a deaf ear._ Mrs. Rossiter’s mother’s heart
wanted, he knew, to get the portrait for
nothing : and, while love is love and all that,
he had the artist's dislike for not collecting
all that was coming to him. Ignatius Mul-
liner, the man, might entertain the idea of
pleasing the girl he worshipped by painting
her on the nod, but Ignatius Mulliner, the
artist, had his schedule of prices. And until

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 53

to-day it was the second Ignatius Mulliner
who had said the deciding word.

This afternoon, however, everything was
changed. In a short but moving speech he
informed Hermione’s mother that the one
wish of his. life was to paint her daughter’s
portrait ; that for so great a privilege he would
not dream of charging a fee; and that if she
would call at the studio on the morrow,
bringing Hermione with her, he would put the
job in hand right away.

In fact, he very nearly offered to paint
another portrait of Mis. Rossiter herself, in
evening dress with her Belgian griffon. He
contrived, however, to hold the fatal words
back: and it was perhaps the recollections
of this belated prudence which gave him,
as he stood on the pavement outside the
house after the interview, a sense of having
failed to be as altruistic as he might have
been.

Stricken with remorse, he decided to look
up good old Cyprian and ask him to come to
the studio to-morrow and criticize his Academy
picture. After that, he would find dear old
George and press a little money on him.
Ten minutes later, he was in Cyprian's
sitting-room.

“One wishes what? ” asked Cyprian incred-
ulously,/

54 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“One wishes,” repeated Ignatius, “that you
would come round to-morrow morning and
have a look at one’s Academy picture and give
one a hint or two about it.”

“Is one really serious?” cried Cyprian, his
eyes beginning to gleam. It was seldom that
he received invitations of this kind. He had,
indeed, been thrown out of more studios for
butting in and giving artists a hint or two
about their pictures than any other art-
critic in Chelsea.

“ One is perfectly serious,” Ignatius assured
him. “One feels that an opinion from an
expert will be invaluable.”

“Then one will be there at eleven sharp,”
said Cyprian, "without fail.”

Ignatius wrung his hand warmly, and
hurried off to the Goat and Bottle to find
George.

“George,” he said, “George, my dear old
chap, I passed a sleepless night last night,
wondering if you had all the money you re-
quire. The fear that you might have run
short seemed to go through me like a knife.
Call on me for as much as you need.”

George’s face was partially obscured by a
tankard. At these words, his eyes, bulging
above the pewter, took on a sudden expression
of acute horror. He lowered the tankard,
ashen to the lips, and raised his right hand.

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 55

"This,” he said in a shaking voice, "is the
end. From this moment I go off the stuff.
Yes, you have seen George Plimsoll Rossiter
drink his last mild-and-bitter. I am not a
nervous man, but I know when I'm licked.
And when it comes to a fellow’s ears going ...”

Ignatius patted his arm affectionately.

"Your ears have not gone, George,” he
said. "They are still there.”

And so, indeed, they were, as large and red
as ever. But George was not to be comforted.

"I mean when a fellow thinks he hears
things. ... I give you my honest word, old
man — I solemnly assure you that I could
have sworn I heard you voluntarily offer me
money.”

"But I did.”

"You did?”

" Certainly.”

"You mean you definitely — literally — with-
out any sort of prompting on my part —
without my so much as saying a word to
indicate that I could do with a small loan till
Friday week —absolutely, positively offered
to lend me money? ”

"I did.”

George drew a deep breath and took up his
tankard again.

"All this modern, advanced stuff you read
about miracles not happening,” he said

56 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

severely, " is dashed poppycock. I disapprove
of it. I resent it keenly. About how much? ”
he went on, pawing adoringly at Ignatius'
sleeve. “To about what, as it were, extent
would you be prepared to go? A quid? ”

Ignatius raised his eyebrows.

"A quid is not much, George,” he said with
quirt reproach.

George made little gurgling noises.

"A fiver?”

Ignatius shook hij head. The movement
was a silent rebuke.

"Correct this petty, cheese-paring spirit,
George,” he. urged. “Be big and broad.
Think spaciously.”

"Not — a tenner? ”

"I was about to suggest fifteen pounds,”
said Ignatius. " If you are sure that will be
enough.”

"What ho!”

"You're positive you can manage with
that? I know how many expenses yQu
have.”

"What ho!”

“Very well, then. If you can get along
with fifteen pounds, come round to my
studio to-mortow morning and we’ll fix it up.”

And, glowing with fervour, Ignatius slapped
George's back in a hearty sort of way and
withdrew.

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 5*

"Something attempted, something done,”
he said to himself, as he climbed into bed some
hours later, “has earned a night’s repose."

Like so many men who live intensely and
work with their brains, my nephew Ignatius
was a heavy sleeper. Generally, after waking
to a new day, he spent a considerable time
lying on his back in a sort of coma, not stir-
ring till lured from his couch by the soft,
appealing smell of frying bacon. On the
following morning, however, he was conscious,
directly he opened his eyes, of a strange
alertness. He was keyed up to quite an
extraordinary extent. He had, in short,
reached the stage when the patient becomes a
little nervous.

Yes, he felt, analysing his emotions, he was
distinctly nervous. The noise of the cat
stamping about in the passage outside caused
him exquisite discomfort. He was just about
to shout to Mrs. Perkins, his charwoman, to
stop the creature, when she rapped suddenly
on the panel to inform him that ]|is shaving-
water lay without: and at the sound he
immediately shot straight up to the ceiling in a
cocoon of sheets and blankets, turned three
complete somersaults in mid-air, and came
down, quivering like a frightened mustang,
in the middle of the floor. His heart was

58 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

entangled with his tonsils, his eyes had
worked round to the back of their sockets,
and he wondered dazedly how many human
souls besides himself had survived the bomb-
explosion.

Reason returning to her throne, his next
impulse was to cry quietly. Remembering
afte^ a while that he was a MuHiner, he
checked the unmanly tears and, creeping to
the bathroom, took a cold shower and felt a
little better. A hearty breakfast assisted
the cure, and he was almost himself again,
when the discovery that there was not a pipe
or a shred of tobacco in the place plunged him'
once more into an inky gloom.

For a long time Ignatius Mulliner sat with
his face in his hands, while all the sorrows of
the woild seemed to rise before him. And
then, abruptly, his mood changed again.
A moment before, he had been pitying the
human race with an intensity that racked him
almost unendurably. Now, the "realization
surged over him that he didn’t care a hoot
about the human race. The only emotion
the human race evoked in him was an intense
dislike. He burned with an irritable loathing
for all created things. If the cat had been
present, he would have kicked it. If Mrs.
Perkins had entered, he would have struck
her with a mahl-stick. But the cat had gone

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 59

off to restore its tissues in the dust-bin, and
Mrs. Perkins was in the kitchen, singing
hymns. Ignatius Mulliner boiled with
baffled fury. Here he was, with all this
concentrated hatred stored up within him,
and not a living thing in sight on which to
expend it. That, he told himself with a
mirthless laugh, was the way things happened.

And just then the door opened, and there,
looking like a camel arriving at an oasis,
was Cyprian.

"Ah, my dear fellow,” said Cyprian. "May
one enter? ”

" Come right in,” said Ignatius.

At the sight of this art-critic, who not
only wore short side-whiskers but also one
of those black stocks which go twice round
the neck and add from forty to fifty per
cent to the loathsomeness of the wearer’s
appearance, a strange, febrile excitement had
gripped Ignatius Mulliner. He felt like a tiger
at the Zoo who sees the keeper approaching
with the luncheon-tray. He licked his lips
slowly and gazed earnestly at the visitor.
From a hook on the wall beside him there hung
a richly inlaid Damascus dagger. He took
it down and tested its point with the ball of
his thumb.

Cyprian had turned his back, and was ex-
amining the Academy picture through a

60 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

black-rimmed monocle. He moved his head
about and peered between his fingers and
made funny, art -critic noises.

"Ye-e-s,” said Cyprian. “'Myes. Ha!
H'm. Hrrmph ! The thing has rhythm, un-
doubted rhythm, and, to an extent, certain
inevitable curves. And yet can one con-
scientiously say that one altogether likes it?
One fears one cannot.”

"No?” said Ignatius.

"No,” said Cyprian. He toyed with his
left whisker. He seeihed to be massaging it
for purposes of his own. "One quite inevit-
ably senses at a glance that the patine lacks
vitality.”

"Yes?” said Ignatius.

“Yes,” said Cyprian. He toyed with the
whisker again. It was too early to judge
whether he was improving it at all. He shut
his eyes, opened them, half closed them once
more, drew back his head, fiddled with his
fingers, and expelled his breath with a hissing
sound, as if he were grooming a horse. "Be-
yond a question one senses in the patine a
lack of vitality. And vitality must never be
sacrificed. The artist should use his palette
as an orchestra. He should put on his
colours as a great conductor uses his instru-
ments. There must be significant form. The
colour must have a flatness, a gravity, shall I

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 61

say an aroma? The figure must be placed on
the canvas in a manner not only harmonious
but awake. Only so can a picture quite too
exquisitely live. And, as regards the pa-
tine ..."

He broke off. He had had more to say
about the patine, but he had heard immedi-
ately behind him an odd, stealthy, shuffling
sound not unlike that made by a leopard of
the jungle when stalking its prey. Spinning
round, he saw Ignatius Mulliner advancing
upon him. The artist’s lips were curled back
over his teeth in a hideous set smile. His
eyes glittered. And poised in his right hand
he held a Damascus dagger, which, Cyprian
noticed, was richly inlaid.

An art -critic who makes a habit of going
round the studios of Chelsea and speaking
his mind to men who are finishing their
Academy pictures gets into the way of think-
ing swiftly. Otherwise, he would not quite
too exquisitely live through a single visit.
To cast a glance at the door and note that it
was closed and that his host was between him
and it was with Cyprian Rossiter the work of '
a moment ; to dart behind the easel the work
of another. And with the easel as a basis the
two men for some tense minutes played a
silent game of round-and-round-the-mul-
berry-bush. It was in the middle of the

62 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

twelfth lap that Cyprian received a flesh
wound in the upper arm.

On another man this might have had the
effect of causing him to falter, lose his head,
and become an easy prey to the pursuer.
But Cyprian had the advantage of having
been through this sort of thing before. Only
a d^y or two ago, one of England’s leading
animal-painters had chivvied him for nearly
an hour in a fruitless endeavour to get
at him with a short bludgeon tipped with
lead.

He kept cool. In the face of danger, his
footwork, always impressive, took on a new
agility. And finally, when Ignatius tripped
over a loose mat, he seized his opportunity
like the strategist which every art-critic has
to be if he mixes-, with artists, and dodged
nimbly into a small cupboard near the model-
throne.

Ignatius recovered his balance just too
late. By the time he had disentangled him-
self from the mat, leaped at the cupboard door
and started to tug at the handle, Cyprian
was tugging at it from the other side, and,
strive though he might, Ignatius could not
dislodge him.

Presently, he gave up the struggle and,
moving moodily away, picked up his ukulele
and played "01’ Man River” for awhile.

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 63

He was just feeling his way cautiously through
that rather tricky "He don’t say miffin'.
He must know somefin’ ” bit, when the door
opened once more and there stood George.
"What ho!” said George.

"Ah!” said Ignatius.

“What do you mean, Ah? ”

“Just ‘Ah!’,” said Ignatius.

"I’ve come for that money.”

"Ah?”

“That twenty quid or whatever it was that
you very decently promised me yesterday.
And, lying in bed this morning, the thought
crossed my mind : Why not make it twenty-
five? A nice, round sum,” argued George.
"Ah!”

"You keep saying ‘Ah!’” said George.
"Why do you say ‘Ah!’?”

Ignatius drew himself up haughtily.

"This is my studio, paid for with my own
money, and I shall say ‘Ah I’ in it just as
often as I please.”

"Of course,” agreed George hurriedly.
" Of course, my dear old chap, of course,
of course. Hullo!” He looked down.
"Shoelace undone. Dangerous. Might trip
a fellow. Excuse me a moment.”

He stooped: and as Ignatius gazed at his
spacious trouser-seat, the thought came to
him that in the special circumstances there

64 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

was but one thing to be done. He waggled
his right leg for a moment to limber it up,
backed a pace or two and crept forward.

Mrs. Rossiter, meanwhile, accompanied by
her daughter Hermione, had left Scantle-
bury Square and, though a trifle, short in the
wind, had covered the distance between it
and # the studio in quite good time. But the
effort had told upon her, and half-way up the
stairs she was compelled to halt for a short
rest. It was as she stood there, puffing
slightly like a seal after diving for fish, that
something seemed to shoot past her in the
darkness.

“What was that?” she exclaimed.

“I thought I saw something, too," said
Hermione.

“Some heavy, moving object.”

“Yes,” said Hermione. “Perhaps we had
better go up and ask Mr. Mulliner if he has
been dropping things downstairs.”

They made their way to the studio.
Ignatius was standing on one leg, rubbing the
toes of his right foot. Your artist is pro-
verbially a dreamy, absent-minded man, and
he had realized too late that he was wearing
bedroom slippers. Despite the fact, however,
that he was in considerable pain, his expres-
sion was not unhappy. He had the air of a

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 65

man who is conscious of having done the
right thing.

"Good morning, Mr. Mulliner," said Mrs.
Rossiter.

"Good morning, Mr. Mulliner," said Her-
mione.

"Good morning,” said Ignatius, looking at
them with deep loathing. It amazed him that
he had ever felt attracted by this girl. Until
this moment, his animosity had been directed
wholly against the male members of her
family : but now that she stood before him he
realized that the real outstanding Rossiter
gumboil was this Hermione. The brief flicker
of joie-de-vivre which had followed his inter-
view with George had died away, leaving his
mood blacker than ever. One scarcely likes to
think what might have happened, had Her-
mione selected that moment to tie her shoelace.

"Well, here we are,” said Mrs. Rossiter.

At this point, unseen by them, the cupboard
door began to open noiselessly. A pale face
peeped out. The next instant, there was a
cloud of dust, a whirring noise, and the sound of
footsteps descending ihe stairs three at a time.

Mrs. Rossiter put a hand to her heart and
panted.

“What was that?”

"It was a little blurred,” said Hermione,
"but I think it was Cyprian ”

66 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Ignatius uttered a passionate cry and
dashed to the head of the stairs.

"Gone!”

He came back, his face contorted, mutter-
ing to himself. Mrs. Rossiter looked at him
keenly. It seemed plain to her that all that
was wanted here was a couple of doctors with
fountain-pens to sign the necessary certificate,
but she was not dismayed. After all, as she
reasoned with not a little shrewd sense, a
gibbering artist is just as good as a sane artist,
provided he makes no charge for painting
portraits.

"Well, Mr. Mulliner,” she said cheerily,
dismissing from her mind the problem, which
had been puzzling her a little, of why her son
Cyprian had been in this studio behaving like
the Scotch Express, "Hermione has nothing
to do this morning, so, if you are free, now
would be a good time for the first sitting."

Ignatius came out of his reverie.

" Sitting?”

"For the portrait.”

"What portrait?”

"Hermione’s portrait.”

“You wish me to paint Miss Rossiter’s
portrait? ”

" Why, you said you would — only last night.”

"Did I?” Ignatius passed a hand across
his forehead. "Perhaps I did. Very well.

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 67

Kindly step to the desk and write out a
cheque for fifty pounds. You have your book
with you? "

"Fifty— what?"

"Guineas," said Ignatius. "A hundred
guineas. I always require a deposit before
I start work."

"But last night you said you would paint
her for nothing."

"I said I would paint her for nothing? ”

"Yes.”

A dim recollection of having behaved in the
fatuous manner described came to Ignatius.

“Well, and suppose I did,” he said warmly.
" Can't you women ever understand when a
man is kidding you? Have you no sense of
humour? Must you always take every light
quip literally? If you want a portrait of
Miss Rossiter, you will jolly well pay for it
in the usual manner. The thing that beats me
is why you do want a portrait of a girl who not
only has most unattractive features but is also
a dull yellow in colour. Furthermore, she
flickers. As I look at her, she definitely
flickers round the edges. Her face is sallow
and unwholesome. Her eyes have no sparkle
of intelligence. Her ears stick out and her
chin goes in. To sum up, her whole appear-
ance gives me an indefinable pain in the
neck: and, if you hold me to my promise, I

68 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

shall charge extra for moral and intellectual
damage and wear and tear caused by having
to sit opposite her and look at her.”

With these words, Ignatius Mulliner turned
and began to rummage in a drawer for his
pipe. But the drawer contained no pipe.

"What!” cried Mrs. Rossiter.

‘#You heard,” said Ignatius.

"My smelling-salts!” gasped Mrs. Rossiter.

Ignatius ran his hand along the mantel-
piece. He opened two cupboards and looked
under the settee. But he found no pipe.

The Mulliners are by nature a courteous
family : and, seeing Mrs. Rossiter sniffing and
gulping there, a belated sense of having been
less tactful than he might have been came to
Ignatius.

"It is possible,” he said, "that my recent
remarks may have caused you pain. If so,
I am sorry. My excuse must be that they
came from a full heart. I am fed to the
tonsils with the human race and look on the
entire Rossiter family as perhaps its darkest
blots. I cannot see the Rossiter family.
There seems to me to be no market for them.
All I require of the Rossiters is their blood.
I nearly got Cyprian with a dagger, but he
was too quick for me. If he fails as a critic
there is always a future for him as a Russian
dancer. However, I had decidedly better

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 69

luck with George. I gave him the juiciest
kick I have ever administered to human
frame. If he had been shot from a gun he
couldn’t have gone out quicker. Probably
he passed you on the stairs?

"So that was what passed us!” said Her-
mione, interested. "I remember thinking at
the time that there was a whiff of George.”

Mrs. Rossiter was staring-* aghast.

"You kicked my son ! ” I

"As squarely in the seat of the pants,
madam,” said Ignatius with modest pride,
"as if I had been practising for weeks.”

"My stricken child!” cried Mrs. Rossiter.
And, hastening from the room, she ran down
the stairs in quest of the remains. A boy’s
best friend is his mother.

In the studio she had left, Hermione was
gazing at Ignatius, in her eyes a look he had
never seen there before.

"I had no idea you were so eloquent, Mr.
Mulliner,” she said, breaking the silence.
"What a vivid description that was that you
gave of me. Quite a prose poem.”

Ignatius made a deprecating gesture.

"Oh, well,” he said.

"Do you really think I am like that?”

"I do.”

"Yellow?”

“Greeny yellow.”

70 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"And my eyes...?” She hesitated for a
word.

" They are not unlike blue oysters,” said
Ignatius, prompting her, "which have been
dead some time.”

" In fact, you don't admire my looks? ”

"Far from it.”

Shfe was saying something, but he had
ceased to listen. Quite suddenly he had
remembered that about a couple of weeks ago,
at a little party which he had given in the
studio, he had dropped a half-smoked cigar
behind the bureau. And as no charwoman is
allowed by the rules of her union to sweep
under bureaux, it might — nay, must — still
be there. With feverish haste he dragged the
bureau out. It was.

Ignatius Mulliner sighed an ecstatic sigh.
Chewed and mangled, covered with dust and
bitten by mice, this object between his fingers
was nevertheless a cigar — a genuine, smoke-
able cigar, containing the regulation eight per
cent of carbon monoxide. He struck a match
and the next moment he had begun to puff.

And, as he did so, the milk of human kind-
ness surged back into his soul like a vast
tidal wave. As swiftly as a rabbit, handled
by a competent conjurer, changes into a
bouquet, a bowl of goldfish or the grand old
flag, Ignatius Mulliner changed into a thing

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 71

of sweetness and light, with charity towards
all, with malice towards none. The pyridine
played about his mucous surfaces, and he
welcomed it like a long-lost brother. He
felt gay, happy, exhilarated.

He looked at Hermione, standing there
with her eyes sparkling and her beautiful
face ashine, and he realized that he had been
all wrong about her. So far from being a
gumboil, she was the loveliest thing that had
ever breathed the perfumed air of Kensing-
ton.

And then, chilling his ecstasy and stopping
his heart in the middle of a beat, came the
recollection of what he had said about her
appearance. He felt pale and boneless. If
ever a man had dished himself properly, that
man, he felt, was Ignatius Mulliner. And he
did not mean maybe.

She was looking at him, and the expression
on her face seemed somehow to suggest that
she was waiting for something.

"Well?” she said.

" I beg your pardon? ” said Ignatius.

She pouted.

"Well, aren't you going to — er — ? "

"What?”

" Well, fold me in your arms and all that sort
of thing,” said Hermione, blushing prettily.

Ignatius tottered.

72 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Who, me?"

"Yes, you.”

"Fold you in my arms? ”

"Yes.”

"But — er — do you want me to?"

" Certainly.”

"I mean . . . after all I said ..."

She stared at him in amazement.

"haven’t you been listening to what I’ve
been telling you? ” she cried.

"I’m sorry.” Ignatius stammered. "Good
deal on my inind just now. Must have
missed it. What did you say? ”

"I said that, if you really think I look
like that, you do not love me, as I had always
supposed, for my beauty, but for my intellect.
And if you knew how I have always longed
to be loved for my intellect ! ”

Ignatius put down his cigar and breathed
deeply.

"Let me get this right,” he said. "Will
you marry me? ”

"Of course I will. You always attracted
me strangely, Ignatius, but I thought you
looked upon me as a mere doll.”

He picked up his cigar, took a puff, laid it
down again, took a step forward, extended
his arms, and folded her in them. And for
a space they stood there, clasped together,
murmuring those broken words that lovers

MAN WHO GAVE UP SMOKING 73

know so well. Then, gently disengaging
her, he went back to the cigar and took
another invigorating puff.

"Besides," she said, "how could a girl help
but love a man who could lift my brother
George right down a whole flight of stairs
with a single kick? ”

Ignatius’ face clouded.

“George! That reminds me. Cyprian
said you said I was like George."

"Oh! I didn’t mean him to repeat that.”

"Well, he did,” said Ignatius moodily.
“And the thought was agony.”

“But I only meant that you and George
tfere both always playing the ukulele. And
I hate ukuleles.”

Ignatius’ face cleared.

“I will give mine to the poor this after-
noon. And, touching Cyprian . . . George
said you said I reminded you of him.”

She hastened to soothe him.

“It’s only the way you dress. You both
wear such horrid sloppy clothes.”

Ignatius folded her in his arms once more.

“You shall take me this very instant to
the best tailor in London,” he said. "Give
me a minute to put on my boots, and I’ll
be with you. You don’t mind if I just step
in at my tobacconist’s for a moment on the
way? I have a large order for him.”

Ill

' THE STORY OF CEDRIC

1 HAVE heard it said that the cosy peace
which envelops the bar-parlour of the
Anglers’ Rest has a tendency to promote
in the regular customers a certain callous-
ness and indifference to human suffering. I
fear there is something in the charge. We
who have made the place our retreat sit
sheltered in a backwater far removed from
the rushing stream of Life. We may be
dimly aware that out in the world there are
hearts that ache and bleed: but we order
another gin and ginger and forget about
them. Tragedy, to us, has come to mean
merely the occasional flatness of a bottle of
beer.

Nevertheless, this crust of selfish detach-
ment can be cracked. And when Mr. Mul-
liner entered on this Sunday evening and
announced that Miss Postlethwaite, our
gifted and popular barmaid, had severed her
engagement to Alfred Lukyn, the courteous

74

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 75

assistant at the Bon Ton Drapery Stores
in the High Street, it is not too much to say
that we were stunned.

"But it’s only half an hour ago,” we cried,
" that she went off to meet him in her best
black satin with the lovelight in her eyes.
They were going to church together.”

“They never reached the sacred edifice,”
said Mr. Mulliner, sighing and taking a grave
sip of hot Scotch and lemon. "The estrange-
ment occurred directly they met. The rock
on which the frail craft of Love split was
the fact that Alfred Lukyn was wearing
yellow shoes.”

"Yellow shoes?”

"Yellow shoes,” said Mr. Mulliner, "of a
singular brightness. These came under
immediate discussion. Miss Postlethwaite,
a girl of exquisite sensibility and devoutness,
argued that to attend evensong in shoes like
that was disrespectful to the Vicar. The
blood of the Lukyns is hot, and Alfred, stung,
retorted that he had paid sixteen shillings
and eightpence for them and that the Vicar
could go and boil his head. The ring then
changed hands and arrangements were put
in train for the return of all gifts and corres-
pondence ”

"Just a lovers’ tiff.”

"Let us hope so.”

76 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

A thoughtful silence fell upon the bar-
parlour. Mr. Mulliner was the first to break
it.

“Strange/' he said, coming out of his
reverie, " to what diverse ends Fate will
employ the same instrument. Here we have
two loving hearts parted by a pair of yellow
shoe#. Yet in the case of my cousin Cedric
it was a pair of yellow shoes that brought him
a bride. These things work both ways.”

To say that I ever genuinely liked my
cousin Cedric (said Mr. Mulliner) would be
paltering with the truth. He was not a man
of whom many men were fond. Even as a
boy he gave evidence of being about to
become what eventually he did become —
one of those neat, prim, fussy, precise, middle-
aged bachelors who are so numerous in the
neighbourhood of St. James Street. It is a
type I have never liked, and Cedric, in addi-
tion to being neat, prim, fussy and precise,
was also one of London's leading snobs.

For the rest, he lived in comfortable rooms
at the Albany, where between the hours of
nine-thirty and twelve in the morning he
would sit closeted with his efficient secretary,
Miss Myrtle Watling, busy on some task the
nature of which remained wrapped in
mystery. Some said he was writing a monu-

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 77

mental history of Spats, others that he was
engaged upon his Memoirs. My private belief
is that he was not working at anything, but
entertained Miss Watling during those hours
simply because he lacked the nerve to dis-
miss her. She was one of those calm, strong
young women who look steadily out upon the
world through spectacles with tortoiseshell
rims. Her mouth was firm, her chin reso-
lute. Mussolini might have fired her, if at
the top of his form, but I can think of nobody
else capable of the feat.

So there you have my cousin Cedric. Forty-
five years of age, forty-five inches round the
waist, an established authority on the sub-
ject of dress, one of the six recognised bores
at his club, and a man with the entree into
all the best houses in London. - TRaF the
peace of such a one could ever be shattered,
that anything could ever occur seriously to
disturb the orderly routine of such a man's
life, might seem incredible. And yet this
happened. How true it is that in this world
we can never tell behind what corner Fate
may not be lurking with the brass knuckles.

The day which was to prove so devastating
to Cedric Mulliner’s bachelor calm began,
ironically, on a note of bright happiness. It
was a Sunday, and he was always at his best

78 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

on Sundays, for that was the day on which
Miss Watling did not come to the Albany.
For some little time back he had been finding
himself more than usually ill at ease in Miss
Watling's presence. She had developed a
habit of looking at him with an odd, specula-
tive expression in her eyes. It was an expres-
sion^vhose meaning he could not read, but it
had disturbed him. He was glad to be
relieved of her society for a whole day.

Then, again, his new morning-clothes had
just arrived from the tailor’s and, looking at
himself in the mirror, he found his appearance
flawless. The tie — quiet and admirable. The
trousers — perfect. The gleaming black boots
— just right. In the matter of dress, he was
a man with a position to keep up. Younger
men looked to him for guidance. To-day, he
felt, he would not fail them.

Finally, he was due at half-past one for
luncheon at the house of Lord Knubble of
Knopp in Grosvenor Square, and he knew
that he could count on meeting there all that
was best and fairest of England’s aristocracy.

His anticipations were more than fulfilled.
Except for a lout of a baronet who had
managed to slip in somehow, there was nobody
beside himself present at the luncheon table
below the rank of Viscount : and, to complete
his happiness, he found himself seated next

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 79

to Lady Chloe Downblotton, the beautiful
daughter of the seventh Earl of Choole, for
whom he had long entertained a paternal and
respectful fondness. And so capitally did
they get on during the meal that, when the
party broke up, she suggested that, if he were
going in her direction, which was the Achilles
statue in the Park, they might stroll together.

"The fact is,” said Lady Chloe, as they
walked down Park Lane, "I feel I must con-
fide in somebody. I've just got engaged.”

“Engaged! Dear lady,” breathed Cedric
reverently, “ I wish you every happiness.
But I have seen no announcement in the
Morning Post.”

“No. And I shouldn’t think the betting
is more than fifteen to four that you ever will.
It all depends on how the good old seventh
Earl reacts when I bring Claude home this
afternoon and lay him on the mat. I love
Claude,” sighed Lady Chloe, “with a passion
too intense for words, but I'm quite aware that
he isn’t everybody's money. You see, he's an
artist and, left to himself, he dresses more
like a tramp cyclist than anything else on
earth. Still, I'm hoping for the best. I
dragged him off to Cohen Bros, yesterday and
made him buy morning-clothes and a top hat.
Thank goodness, he looked positively respect-
able, so . . .”

80 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Her voice died away in a strangled rattle.
They had entered the Park and were drawing
near to the Achilles statue, and coming to-
wards them, his top hat raised in a debonnair
manner, was a young man of pleasing appear-
ance, correctly clad in morning-coat, grey tie,
stiff collar, and an unimpeachable pair of
sponge-bag trousers, nicely creased from
north to south.

But he was, alas, not one hundred per
cent correct. From- neck to ankles beyond
criticism, below that he went all to pieces.
What had caused Lady Chloe to lose the
thread of her remarks and Cedric Mulliner
to utter a horrified moan was the fact that
this young man was wearing bright yellow
shoes.

“Claude!” Lady Chloe covered her eyes
with a shaking hand. “Ye Gods!” she
cried. “The foot-joy! The banana spec-
ials! The yellow perils! Why? For what
reason?”

The young man seemed taken aback.

“Don’t you like them?” he said. "I
thought they were rather natty. Just what
the rig-out needed, in my opinion, a touch of
colour. It seemed to me to help the composi-
tion.”

"They’re awful. Tell him how awfrj they
are, Mr. Mulliner.”

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 81

"Tan shoes are not worn with morning-
clothes," said Cedric in a low, grave voice.
He was deeply shaken.

"Why not?"

"Never mind why not,” said Lady Chloe.
"They aren't. Look at Mr. Mulliner's.”

The young man did so.

"Tame," he said. "Colourless. Lacking
in spirit and that indefinable something. I
don’t like them.”

"Well, you've jolly well got to learn to like
them,” said Lady Chloe, "because you're
going to change with Mr. Mulliner this very
minute.”

A shrill, bat-like, middle-aged bachelor
squeak forced itself from Cedric's lips. He
could hardly believe he had heard correctly.

"Come along, both of you,” said Lady
Chloe briskly. "You can do it over there
behind those chairs. I’m sure you don't mind,
Mr. Mulliner, do you? "

Cedric was still shuddering strongly.

"You ask me to put on yellow shoes with
morning-clothes?” he whispered, the face be-
neath his shining silk hat pale and drawn.

"Yes.”

"Here? In the Park? At the height of
the Season?”

"Yes. Do hurry."

"But . .

82 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“Mr. Muliinerl Surely? To oblige me?"

She was gazing at him with pleading eyes,
and from the confused welter of Cedric's
thoughts there emerged, clear and crystal-
like, the recollection of the all-important fact
that this girl was the daughter of an Earl and
rela^d on her mother’s side not only to the
Somersetshire Meophams, but to the Brash-
marleys of Bucks, the Widringtons of Wilts,
and the Hilsbury-Hep worths of Hants. Could
he refuse any request, however monstrous,
proceeding from one so extremely well-
connected?

He stood palsied. All his life he had prided
himself on the unassailable orthodoxy of his
costume. As a young man he had never gone
in for bright ties. His rigidity in the matter of
turned-up trousers was a byword. And,
though the fashion had been set by an Exalted
Personage, he had always stood out against
even such a venial lapse a s the wearing of a
white waistcoat with a dinner-jacket. How
little this girl knew the magnitude of the thing
she was asking of him. He blinked. His
eyes watered and his ears twitched. Hyde
Park seemed to whirl about him.

And then, like a voice from afar, something
seemed to whisper in his ear that this girl's
second cousin, Adelaide, had married Lord
Slythe and Sayle and that among the branches

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 83

of the family were the Sussex Booles and the
ffrench-ffarmiloes — not the Kent ffrench-
ffarmiloes but the Dorsetshire lot. It just
turned the scale.

" So be it ! ” said Cedric Mulliner.

For a few moments after he found himself
alone, my cousin Cedric had all the appearance
of a man at a loss for his next move. He
stood rooted to the spot, staring spellbound
at the saffron horrors which had blossomed
on his hitherto blameless feet. Then, pulling
himself together with a strong effort, he slunk
to Hyde Park Corner, stopped a passing cab,
and, having directed the driver to take him
to the Albany, leaped hastily in.

The relief of being under cover was at first
so exquisite that his mind had no room for
other thoughts. Soon, he told himself, he
would be safe in his cosy apartment, with the
choice of thirty-seven pairs of black boots to
take the place of these ghastly objects. It
was only when the cab reached the Albany
that he realised the difficulties which lay in
his path.

How could he walk through the lobby of
the Albany looking like a ship with yellow
fever on board — he, Cedric Mulliner, the man
whose advice on the niceties of dress had fre-
quently been sought by young men in the

84 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Brigade of Guards and once by the second son
of a Marquis? The thing was inconceivable.
All his better nature recoiled from it. Then
what to do?

It is characteristic of the Mulliners as a
family that, however sore the straits in which
they find themselves, they never wholly lose
theij presence of mind. Cedric leaned out
of the window and addressed the driver of
the cab.

"My man," he sa-’.d, "how much do you
want for your boots? "

The driver was not one of London’s light-
ning thinkers. For a full minute he sat,
looking like a red-nosed sheep, allowing the
idea to penetrate.

"My boots?” he said at length.

"Your boots!"

"How much do I want for my boots? ”

"Precisely. I am anxious to obtain your
boots. How much for the boots? ”

“How much for the boots? ”

"Exactly. The boots. How much for
them? ”

"You want to buy my boots? "

"Precisely.”

"Ah,” said the driver, “but the whole
thing is, you see, it’s like this. I’m not
wearing any boots. I suffer from corns, so
I come out in a tennis shoe and a carpet

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 85

slipper. I could do you them at ten bob
the pair.”

Cedric Mulliner sank dumbly back. The
disappointment had been numbing. But the
old Mulliner resourcefulness stood him in
good stead. A moment later, his head was
out of the window again.

"Take me,” he said, "to Seven, Nasturtium
Villas, Marigold Road, Valley Fields.”

The driver thought this over for a while.

"Why?” he said.

"Never mind why.”

"The Albany you told me,” said the driver.
"Take me to the Albany was what you
said. And this here is the Albany. Ask
anyone.”

"Yes, yes, yes. But I now wish to go to
Seven, Nasturtium Villas. ...”

"How do you spell it? ”

“One ‘n’. Seven, Nasturtium Villas, Mari-
gold Road ...”

" How do you spell that ?”

"One *g\"

"And it’s in Valley Fields, you say?”

" Precisely.”

"One ‘v’? ”

"One 'v' and one 'l',” said Cedric.

The driver sat silent for awhile. The
spelling-bee over, he seemed to be marshall-
ing his thoughts.

86

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Now I'm beginning to get the whole
thing,” he said. "What you want to do is
go to Seven, Nasturtium Villas, Marigold
Road, Valley Fields.”

" Precisely.”

"Well, will you have the tennis-shoe and
the carpet-slipper now, or wait till we get
there* ”

"I do not desire the tennis shoe. I have
no wish for the carpet slipper. I am not in
the market for them.*'

"I could do you them at half-a-crown
apiece.”

"No, thank you.”

"Couple of bob, then.”

"No, no, no. I do not want the tennis
shoe. The carpet slipper makes no appeal
to me.”

"You don't want the shoe?”

"No.”

"And you don’t want the slipper?”

"No.”

"But you do want,” said the driver,
assembling the facts and arranging them in
an ordinary manner, “to go to Seven,
Nasturtium Villas, Marigold Road, Valley
Fields?”

"Precisely.”

"Ah,” said the driver, slipping in his clutch
with an air of quiet rebuke. "Now we've got

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 87

the thing straight. If you’d only told me that
in the first place, we'd have been 'arf-way
there by now."

The urge which had come upon Cedric
Mulliner to visit Seven, Nasturtium Villas,
Marigold Road, Valley Fields, that picturesque
suburb in the south-eastern postal division of
London, had been due to no idle whim. Nor
was it prompted by a mere passion for travel
and sightseeing. It was at that address that
his secretary, Miss Myrtle Watling, lived : and
the plan which Cedric had now formed was,
in his opinion, the best to date. What he
proposed to do was to seek out Miss Watling,
give her his latch-key, and dispatch her to
the Albany in the cab to fetch him one
of his thirty-seven pairs of black boots.
When she returned with them he could put
them on and look the world in the face
again.

He could see no flaw in the scheme, nor did
any present itself during the long ride to
Valley Fields. It was only when the cab had
stopped outside the front garden of the neat
little red-brick house and he had alighted and
told the driver to wait ("Wait?” said the
driver. "How do you mean, wait? Oh, you
mean wait?”) that doubts began to disturb
him. Even as he raised his finger to press

88 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

the door-bell, there crept over him a chilly
feeling of mistrust, and he drew the finger
back as sharply as if he had found it on the
point of prodding a Dowager Duchess in the
ribs.

Could he meet Miss Watling in morning-
clothes and yellow shoes? Reluctantly he
tol(f himself that he could not. He remem-
bered how often she had taken down at his
dictation letters to the Times deploring modern
laxity on matters of dress: and his brain
reeled at the thought of how she would look
if she saw him now. Those raised brows . . .
those scornful lips . . . those clear, calm
eyes registering disgust through their wind-
shields. . . .

No, he could not face Miss Watling.

A sort of dull resignation came over Cedric
Mulliner. It was useless, he saw, to struggle
any longer. He was on the point of moving
from the door and going back to the cab and
embarking on the laborious task of explaining
to the driver that he wished to return to the
Albany ("But I took you there once, and
you didn’t like it,” he could hear the man
saying) when from somewhere close at hand
there came to his ears a sudden, loud, gurgling
noise, rather like that which might have pro-
ceeded from a pig suffocating in a vat of glue.
It was the sound of someone snoring. He

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 89

turned, and was aware of an open window at
his elbow.

The afternoon, I should have mentioned
before, was oppressively warm. It was the
sort of afternoon when suburban householders,
after keeping body and soul together with
roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, mealy pota-
toes, apple tart, cheddar cheese and bottled
beer, retire into sitting-rooms and take re-
freshing naps. Such a householder, enjoying
such a nap, was the conspicuous feature of the
room into which my cousin Cedric was now
peering. He was a large, stout man, and he
lay in an arm-chair with a handkerchief over
his face and his feet on another chair. And
those feet, Cedric saw, were clad merely in a
pair of mauve socks. His boots lay beside
him on the carpet.

With a sudden thrill as sharp as if he
had backed into a hot radiator in his bath-
room, Cedric perceived that they v r ere black
boots.

The next moment, as if impelled by some
irresistible force, Cedric Mulliner had shot
silently through the window and was crawl-
ing on all fours along the floor. His teeth
were clenched, and his eyes gleamed with a
strange light. If he had not been wearing
a top hat, he would have been an almost

90 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

exact replica of the hunting-cheetah of the
Indian jungle stalking its prey.

Cedric crept stealthily on. For a man who
had never done this sort of thing before, he
showed astonishing proficiency and technique.
Indeed, had the cheetah which he so closely
resefnbled chanced to be present, it could
undoubtedly have picked up a hint or two
which it would havejound useful in its busi-
ness. Inch by inch he moved silently for-
ward, and now his itching fingers were
hovering over the nearer of the two boots.
At this moment, however, the drowsy still-
ness of the summer afternoon was shattered
by what sounded to his strained senses like
G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.
It was, as a matter of fact, only his hat
dropping to the floor, but in the highly ner-
vous state of mind into which he had been
plunged by recent events it nearly deafened
him. With one noiseless, agile spring, re-
markable in one of his waist -measurement,
he dived for shelter behind the arm-chair.

A long moment passed. At first he
thought that all was well. The sleeper had
apparently not wakened. Then there was
a gurgle, a heavy body sat up, and a large
hand passed within an inch of Cedric's head
and pressed the bell in the wall. And pres-

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 91

ently the door opened and a parlourmaid
entered.

"Jane,” said the man in the chair.

"Sir?”

"Something woke me up.”

"Yes, sir?”

"I got the impression . . . Jane!”

"Sir?”

"What is that top-hat doing on the floor? ”

"Top-hat, sir?”

"Yes, top-hat. This is a nice thing,” said
the man, speaking querulously. "I compose
myself for a refreshing sleep, and almost
before I can close my eyes the room becomes
full of top-hats. I come in here for a quiet
rest, and without the slightest warning I find
myself knee-deep in top-hats. Why the top-
hat, Jane? I demand a categorical answer.”

"Perhaps Miss Myrtle put it there, sir.”

"Why would Miss Myrtle strew top hats
about the place?”

"Yes, sir.”

"What do you mean, Yes, sir?”

"No, sir.”

"Very well. Another time, think before
you speak. Remove the hat, Jane, and see
to it that I am not disturbed again. It is
imperative that I get my afternoon’s rest.”

“Miss Myrtle said that you were to weed
the front garden, sir.”

92 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"I am aware of the fact, Jane,” said the
man with dignity. “In due course I shall
proceed to the front-garden and start weed-
ing. But first I must have my afternoon’s
rest. This is a Sunday in June. The birds
are sleeping in the trees. Master Willie is
sleeping in his room, as ordered by the doc-
tor.* I, too, intend to sleep. Leave me,
Jane, taking the top hat with you.”

The door closed. The man sank back in
his chair with a satisfied grunt, and pres-
ently he had begun to snore again.

Cedric did not act hastily. Bitter ex-
perience was teaching him the caution which
Boy Scouts learn in the cradle. For perhaps
a quarter of an hour he remained where he
was, crouching in his hiding place. Then
the snoring rose to a crescendo. It had now
become like something out of Wagner, and
it seemed to Cedric that the moment had
arrived when action could safely be taken.
He removed his left boot and, creeping softly
from his lair, seized one of the black boots
and put it on. It was a nice fit, and for the
first time something approaching contentment
began to steal upon him. A minute more,
one little minute, and all would be well.

This heartening thought had just crossed
his mind when with an abruptness which

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 93

caused his heart to loosen one of his front
teeth the silence was again broken — this
time by something that sounded like the
Grand Fleet putting in a bit of gunnery-
practice off the Nore. An instant later, he
was back, quivering, in his niche behind the
chair.

The sleeper sat up with a jerk.

“Save the women and children," he said.

Then the hand came out and pressed the
bell again.

“Jane!”

“Sir?”

"Jane, that beastly window-sash has got
loose again. I never saw anything like the
sashes in this house. A fly settles on them
and down they come. Prop it up with a
book or something.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And ill tell you one thing, Jane, and you
can quote me as having said so. Next time
I want a quiet afternoon’s rest, I shall go to
a boiler-factory.”

The parlour-maid withdrew. The man
heaved a sigh, and lowered himself into the
chair again. And presently the room was
echoing once more with the Ride of the
Valkyries.

It was shortly after this that the bumps
began on the ceiling.

94

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

They were good, hearty bumps. It sounded
to Cedric as if a number of people with large
feet were dancing Morris dances in the room
above, and he chafed at the selfishness which
could lead them to indulge in their pleasures
at such a time. Already the man in the chair
had begun to stir, and now he sat up and
reached for the bell with the old familiar
movement.

"Jane!"

"Sir?”'

"Listen!”

"Yes, sir."

"What is it?"

" It is Master Willie, I think, sir, taking his
Sunday sleep.”

The man heaved himself out of the chair.
It was plain that his emotions were too deep
for speech. He yawned cavernously , and be-
gan to put on his boots.

"Jane!”

"Sir?”

"I have had enough of this. I shall now
go and weed the front garden. Where is my
hoe?"

"In the hall, sir.”

"Persecution,” said the man bitterly.
"That’s what it is, persecution. Top-hats
. . . window-sashes . . . Master Willie . . .
You can argue as much as you like, Jane,

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 95

but I shall speak out fearlessly. I insist —
and the facts support me — that it is perse-
cution. . . . Jane!"

A wordless gurgle proceeded from his lips.
He seemed to be choking.

"Jane!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Look me in the face!"*

"Yes, sir."

"Now, answer me, Jane, and let us have
no subterfuge or equivocation . Who turned
this boot yellow? ' 1 ~

"Boot, sir?"

"Yes, boot."

"Yellow, sir?"

"Yes, yellow. Look at that boot. Inspect
it. Run your eye over it in an unprejudiced
spirit. When I took this boot off it was
black. I close my eyes for a few brief moments
and when I open them it is yellow. I am not
a man tamely to submit to this sort of thing.
Who did this? "

"Not me, sir.”

"Somebody must have done it. Possibly
it is the work of a gang. Sinister things are
happening in this house. I tell you, Jane,
that Seven, Nasturtium Villas has suddenly
— on a Sunday, too, which makes it worse —
become a house of mystery. I shall be vastly
surprised if, before the day is out, clutching

96 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

hands do not appear through the curtains
and dead bodies drop out of the walls. I
don't like it, Jane, and I tell you so frankly.
Stand out of my way, woman, and let me
get at those weeds."

The door banged, and there was peace in
the sitting-room. But not in the heart of
Cedric Mulliner. All the Mulliners are clear
thinkers, and it did not take Cedric long to
recognise the fact that his position had
^hanged considerably for the worse. Yes,
'h^Jiad lost ground. He had come into this
romrt with a top hat and yellow boots. He
^mld go out of it minus a top hat and wear-
'irig one yellow boot and one black one.

A severe set-back.

x And now, to complete his discomfiture, his
Jine of communications had been cut. Be-
lt ween him and the cab in which he could
knd/at least temporary safety there stood
trMJknan with the hoe. It was a situation
tovraMmidate even a man with a taste for
adventure. Douglas Fairbanks would not
have liked it. Cedric himself found it
intolerable.

There seemed but one course to pursue.
This ghastly house presumably possessed a
back-garden with a door leading out into it.
The only thing to do was to flit noiselessly
along the passage — if in such a house noise-

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 97

lessness were possible — and find that door
and get out into the garden and climb over
the wall into the next garden and sneak out
into the road and gallop to the cab and so
home. He had almost ceased to care what
the hall-porter at the Albany would think
of him. Perhaps he could pass his appear-
ance off with a light laugh and some story of
a bet. Possibly a handsome bribe would
close the man's mouth. At any rate, what-
ever might be the issue, upshot or outcome,
back to the Albany he IflilSt go, and that
with all possible speed. His spirit was
broken.

Tiptoeing over the carpet, Cedric opened
the door and peeped out. The passage was
empty. He crept along it, and had nearly
reached its end when he heard the sound of
footsteps descending the stairs. There was
a door to his left. It was ajar. He leaped
through and found himself in a small room
through the window of which he looked out
onto a pleasant garden. The footsteps passed
on and went down the kitchen stairs.

Cedric breathed again. It seemed to him
that the danger was past and that he could
now embark on the last portion of his perilous
journey. The thought of the cab drew him
like a magnet. Until this moment he had
not been conscious of any marked fondness

98 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

for the driver of the cab, but now he found
himself yearning for his society. He panted
for the driver as the hart pants after the
water-brooks.

Cautiously, Cedric Mulliner opened the
window. He put his head out to examine the
terrain before proceeding farther. The sight
encouraged him. The drop to the ground
befow was of the simplest. He had merely
to wriggle through, and all would be well.

It was as he was preparing to do this that
the window-sash descended on the back of
his neck like a guillotine, and he found him-
self firmly pinned to the sill.

A thoughtful-looking ginger-coloured cat,
which had risen from the mat at his entrance
and had been scrutinizing him with a pale
eye, now moved forward and sniffed specu-
latively at his left ankle. The proceedings
seemed to the cat irregular but full of human
interest. It sat down and gave itself up to
meditation.

Cedric, meanwhile, had done the same.
There is, if you come to think of it, little else
that a man in his position can do but medi-
tate. And so for some considerable space of
time Cedric Mulliner looked down upon the
smiling garden and busied himself with his
thoughts.

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 99

These, as may readily be imagined, were
not of the most agreeable. In circumstances
such as those in which he had been placed,
it is but rarely that the sunny and genial
side of a man's mind comes uppermost. He
tends to be bitter, and it is inevitable that
his rancour should be directed at those whom
he considers responsible for his unpleasant
situation.

In Cedric’s case, there was no difficulty
in fixing the responsibility. It was a woman
— if one may apply the term to the only
daughter of an Earl — who had caused his
downfall. Nothing could be more significant
of the revolution which circumstances had
brought about in Cedric’s mind than the
fact that, regardless of her high position
in Society, he now found himself thinking
of Lady Chloe Downblotton in the harshest
possible vein.

So moved, indeed, was he that, not con-
tent with thoroughly disliking Lady Chloe,
he was soon extending his loathing — first to
her nearer relations, and finally, incredible
is it may seem, to the entire British aris-
tocracy. Twenty-four hours ago — aye even
a brief two hours ago — Cedric Mulliner had
loved every occupant of Debrett’s Peerage,
from the premier Dukes right down to the
people who scrape in at the bottom of

ioo MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

the page under the heading " Collateral
Branches,” with a respectful fervour which
it had seemed that nothing would ever be
able to quench. And now there ran riot in
his soul something that was little short of
Red Republicanism.

Drones, he considered them, and — it
might be severe, but he stuck to it — mere
popinjays. Yes, mere thriftless popinjays.
It so happened that he had never actually
seen a popinjay, .but he was convinced by
some strange instinct that this was whal
the typical aristocrat of his native country
resembled.

“How long?” groaned Cedric. "How
long?”

He yearned for the day when the clean
flame of Freedom, blazing from Moscow,
should scorch these wastrels to a crisp,
starting with Lady 7 Chloe Downblotton and
then taking the others in order of prece-
dence.

It was at this point in his meditations that
his attention was diverted from the Social
Revolution by an agonizing pain in his right
calf.

To the more meditative type of cat there
comes at irregular intervals a strange, dreamy
urge to stand on its hind legs and sharper
its claws on the nearest perpendicular object.

THE STORY OF CEDRIC ioi

This is usually a tree, but in the present
case, there being no tree to hand, the ginger-
coloured cat inside the room had made
shift with Cedric’s right calf. Absently, its
mind revolving who knows what abstruse
subjects, it blinked once or twice; then,
rising, got its claws well into the flesh and
pulled them down with a slow, lingering
motion.

From Cedric's lips there came a cry like
that of some Indian peasant who, wandering
on the banks of the Ganges, suddenly finds
himself being bitten in half by a crocodile. It
rang through the garden like a clarion, and, as
the echoes died away, a girl came up the
path. The sun glinted on her tortoiseshell-
rimmed spectacles, and Cedric recognised his
secretary. Miss Myrtle Watling.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Mulliner,” said Miss
Watling.

She spoke in her usual calm, controlled
voice. If she was surprised to see her em-
ployer and, seeing him, to behold nothing
of him except his head, there was little to
show it. A private secretary learns at the
outset of their association never to be
astonished at anything her employer may
do.

Yet Myrtle Watling was not altogether
devoid of feminine curiosity.

102

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“ What are you doing there, Mr. Mulliner? "
she asked.

"Something is biting me in the leg,” cried
Cedric.

"It is probably Mortal Error,” said Miss
Watling, who was a Christian Scientist.
"Why are you standing there in that rather
constrained attitude? ”

"The sash came down as I was looking
out of window.”

"Why were you looking out of window? ”

"To see how far there was to drop? ”

"Why did you wish to drop?”

" I wanted to get away from here."

"Why did you come here?”

It became plain to Cedric that he must
tell his story. He was loath to do so, but
to refrain meant that Myrtle Watling would
stand there till sunset, saying sentences
beginning with " Why? ” In a husky voice
he told her all.

For some moment after he had finished,
the girl remained silent. A pensive expres-
sion had come into her face.

"What you need,” she said, "is someone
to look after you.”

She paused.

"Well, it's not everybody’s job,” she said
reflectively, "but I don’t mind taking it

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 103

A strange foreboding chilled Cedric.

"What do you mean?” he gasped.

“What you need,” said Myrtle Watling,
"is a wife. It is a matter which I have been
turning over in my mind for some time, and
now the thing is quite clear to me. You
should be married. I will marry you, Mr.
Mulliner.”

Cedric uttered a low cry. This, then, was
the meaning of that look which during the
past few weeks he had happened to note
from time to time in his secretary's glass-
fringed eyes.

Footsteps sounded in the gravel path. A
voice spoke, the voice of the man who had
slept in the chair. He was plainly per-
turbed.

"Myrtle,” he said, " I am not a man, as
you know, to make a fuss about nothing. I
take life as it comes, the rough with the
smooth. But I feel it my duty to tell you
that eerie influences are at work in this house.
The atmosphere has become definitely sin-
ister. Top-hats appear from nowhere. Black
boots turn yellow. And now this cabby here,
this cab-driver fellow. ... I didn't get
your name. Lanchester? Mr. Lanchester,
my daughter Myrtle. . . . And now Mr.
Lanchester here tells me that a fare of his
entered our front garden some time back and

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

104

instantly vanished off the face of the earth,
and has never been seen again. I am con-
vinced that some little-known Secret Society
is at work and that Seven, Nasturtium
Villas, is one of those houses you see in the
mystery-plays where shrieks are heard from
dark corners and mysterious Chinamen flit
to find fro making significant gestures and
. . He broke off with a sharp howl of
dismay, and stood staring. “Good God!
What’s that?”

“What, father?”

"That. That bodiless head. That trunlc-
less face. I give you my honest word that
there is a severed head protruding from the
side of the house. Come over where I'm
standing. You can see it distinctly from
here.”

“Oh, that?” said Myrtle. “That is my
fiance.”

“Your fiance?”

“My fiance, Mr. Cedric Mulliner.”

“Is that all there is of him?” asked the
cabman, surprised.

"There is more inside the house,” said
Myrtle.

Mr. Watling, his composure somewhat res-
tored, was scrutinizing Cedric narrowly.

"Mulliner? You’re the fellow my daughter
works for, aren’t you? ”

THE STORY OF CEDRIC 105

“I am,” said Cedric.

“And you want to marry her?”

"Certainly he wants to marry me,” said
Myrtle, before Cedric could reply.

And suddenly something inside Cedric
seemed to say "Why not?” It was true
that he had never contemplated matrimony,
except with that shrinking horror which all
middle-aged bachelors feel when the thought
of it comes into their minds in moments of
depression. It was true, also, that if he had
been asked to submit specifications for a
bride, he would have sketched out some-
thing differing from Myrtle Watling in not
a few respects. But, after all, he felt as he
looked at her strong, capable face, with a
wife like this girl he would at least be shielded
and sheltered from the world, and never
again exposed to the sort of thing he had
been going through that afternoon. It
seemed good enough.

And there was another thing. And to a
man of Cedric’s strong Republican views it
was perhaps the most important of all.
Whatever you might say against Myrtle
Watling, she was not a member of the gay
and heartless aristocracy. No Sussex Booles,
no Hants Hilsbury-Hepworths in her family.
She came of good, solid suburban stock,
related on the male side to the Higginsons

106 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

of Tangerine Road, Wandsworth, and through
the female branch connected with the Browns
of Bickley, the Perkinses of Peckham, and
the Wodgers, — the Winchmore Hill Wodgers,
not the Ponder’s End lot.

"It is my dearest wish,” said Cedric in a
low, steady voice. "And if somebody will
kindly lift this window off my neck and
kick this beastly cat or something which
keeps clawing my leg, we can all get together
and talk it over.” -

IV

THE ORDEAL OF OSBEKT MULLINER

T HE unwonted gravity of Mr. Mulliner's
demeanour had struck us all directly
he entered the bar-parlour of the
Anglers' Rest : and the silent, moody way in
which he sipped his hot Scotch and lemon
convinced us that something was wrong.
We hastened to make sympathetic inquiries.

Our solicitude s eemed to please him. He
brightened a little.

“Well, gentlemen," he said, “I had not
intended to intrude my private troubles on
this happy gathering, but, if you must know,
a young second cousin of mine has left his
wife and is filing papers of divorce. It has
upset me very much.”'

Miss Postlethwaite, our warm-hearted bar-
maid, who was polishing glasses, introduced a
sort of bedside manner into her task.

"Some viper crept into his home?” she
asked.

Mr. Mulliner shook his head.

107

108 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“No,” he said. "No vipers. The whole
trouble appears to have been that, whenever
my second cousin spoke to his wife, she
would open her eyes to their fullest extent,
put her head on one side like a canary, and
say 'What?' He said he had stood it for
eleven months and three days, which he
believes to be a European record, and that the
time*had now come, in his opinion, to take
steps.”

Mr. Mulliner sighed.

"The fact of the matter is,” he said,
"marriage to-day is made much too simple
for a man. He finds it so easy to go out and
grab some sweet girl that when he has got
her he does not value her. I am convinced
that that is the real cause of this modern boom
in divorce. What marriage needs, to make it
a stable institution, is something in the nature
of obstacles during the courtship period. I
attribute the solid happiness of my nephew
Osbert's union, to take but one instance,
to the events which preceded it. If the thing
had been a walk-over, he would have prized
his wife far less highly.”

“It took him a long time to teach her
his true worth?” we asked.

"Love burgeoned slowly?” hazarded Miss
Postlethwaite.

"On the contrary,” said Mr. Mulliner,

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 109

“she loved him at first sight. What made
the wooing of Mabel Petherick-Soames so
extraordinarily difficult for my nephew Os-
bert was not any coldness on her part, but the
unfortunate mental attitude of J. Bashford
Braddock. Does that name suggest anything
to you, gentlemen? "

“No."

"You do not think that man with such a
name would be likely to be a toughish sort
of egg?"

"He might be, now you mention it.”

"He was. In Central Africa, where he
spent a good deal of his time exploring,
ostriches would bury their heads in the sand
at Bashford Braddock’s approach and even
rhinoceroses, the most ferocious beasts in
existence, frequently edged behind trees and
hid till he had passed. And the moment he
came into Osbert’s life my nephew realized
with a sickening clearness that those rhinoc-
eroses had known their business.”

Until the advent of this man Braddock
(said Mr. Mulliner), Fortune seemed to have
lavished her favours on my nephew Osbert
in full and even overflowing measure. Hand-
some, like all the Mulliners, he possessed in
addition to good looks the inestimable bless-
ings of perfect health, a cheerful disposition,

IIO MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

and so much money that Income-Tax asses-
sors screamed with joy when forwarding
Schedule D to his address. And, on top of
all this, he had fallen deeply in love with a
most charming girl and rather fancied that
his passion was reciprocated.

For several peaceful, happy weeks all
went well. Osbert advanced without a set-
bad^ of any description through the various
stages of calling, sending flowers, asking
after her father’s lumbago, and patting her
mother’s Pomeranian to the point where he
was able, with the family’s full approval, to
invite the girl out alone to dinner and
a theatre. And it was on this night ol
nights, when all should have been joy and
happiness, that the Braddock menace took
shape.

Until Bashford Braddock made his appear-
ance, no sort of hitch had occurred to mar
the perfect tranquillity of the evening's pro-
ceedings. The dinner had been excellent,
the play entertaining. Twice during the
third act Osbert had ventured to squeeze
the girl’s hand in a warm, though of course
gentlemanly, manner: and it seemed to him
that the pressure had been returned. It is
not surprising, therefore, that by the time
they were parting on the steps of her house
he had reached the conclusion that he was

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER in

onto a good thing which should be pushed
along.

Putting his fortune to the test, to win or
lose it all, Osbert Mulliner reached forward,
clasped Mabel Petherick-Soames to his bosom,
and gave her a kiss so ardent that in the
silent night it sounded like somebody letting
off a Mills bomb.

And scarcely had the echoes died away,
when he became aware that there was stand-
ing at his elbow a tall, broad-shouldered
man in evening dress and an opera hat.

There was a pause. The girl was the first
to speak.

“Hullo, Bashy,” she said, and there was
annoyance in her voice. “Where on earth
did you spring from? I thought you were
exploring on the Congo or somewhere.”

The man removed his opera hat, squashed
it flat, popped it out again and spoke in a
deep, rumbling voice.

"I returned from the Congo this morning.
I have been dining with your father and
mother. They informed me that you had
gone to the theatre with this gentleman.”

" Mr. Mulliner. My cousin, Bashford Brad-
dock.”

“How do you do? ” said Osbert.

There was another pause. Bashford
Braddock removed his opera hat, squashed

112

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

it flat, popped it out again and replaced it on
his head. He seemed disappointed that he
could not play a tune on it.

" Well, good night,” said Mabel.

"Good night,” said Osbert.

"Good night,” said Bashford Braddock

The door closed, and Osbert, looking from
it to his companion, found that the other
was ^taring at him with a peculiar expression
in his eyes. They were hard, glittering
eyes. Osbert did not like them.

"Mr. Mulliner,” sa'.d Bashford Braddock.

"Hullo?” said Osbert.

" A word with you. I saw all.”

"All?”

"All. Mr. Mulliner, you love that girl.”

"I do.”

"So do I.”

"You do?”

"I do.”

Osbert felt a little embarrassed. All he
could think of to say was that it made them
seem like one great big family.

"I have loved her since she was so
high.”

"How high?” asked Osbert, for the light
was uncertain.

"About so high. And I have always
sworn that if ever any man came between
us; if ever any slinking, sneaking, pop-eyed.

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 113

lop-eared son of a sea-cook attempted to rob
me of that girl, I would ..."

"Er — what?” asked Osbert.

Bashford Braddock laughed a short, metal-
lic laugh.

"Did you ever hear what I did to the King
of Mgumbo-Mgumbo? "

"I didn’t even know there was a King
of Mgumbo-Mgumbo.”

"There isn’t — now,” said Bashford Brad-
dock.

Osbert was conscious of a clammy, creeping
sensation in the region of his spine.

“What did you do to him? ”

"Don’t ask.”

"But I want to know.”

"Far better not. You will find out quite
soon enough if you continue to hang round
Mabel Petherick-Soames. That is all, Mr.
Mulliner.” Bashford Braddock looked up
at the twinkling stars. "What delightful
weather we are having,” he said. "There
was just the same quiet hush and peaceful
starlight, I recollect, that time out in the
Ngobi desert when I strangled the jaguar.”

Osbert's Adam’s Apple slipped a cog.

“ W — what jaguar? ”

"Oh, you wouldn’t know it. Just one
of the jaguars out there. I had a rather
tricky five minutes of it at first, because my

1 14 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

right arm was in a sling and I could only use
my left. Well, good night, Mr. Mulliner,
good night.”

And Bashford Braddock, having removed
his opera hat, squashed it flat, popped it out
again and replaced it on his head, stalked
off into the darkness.

Fof* several minutes after he had dis-
appeared Osbert Mulliner stood motionless,
staring after him with unseeing eyes. Then,
tottering round the corner, he made his way
to his residence in South Audley Street, and,
contriving after three false starts to unlock
the front door, climbed the stairs to his cosy
library. There, having mixed himself a strong
brandy-and-soda, he sat down and gave him-
self up to meditation : and eventually, after one
quick drink and another taken rather slower,
was able to marshal liis thoughts with a certain
measure of coherence. And those thoughts,
I regret to say, when marshalled, were of a
nature which I shrink from revealing to you.

It is never pleasant, gentlemen, to have to
display a relative in an unsympathetic light,
but the truth is the truth and must be told.
I am compelled, therefore, to confess that
my nephew Osbert, forgetting that he was a
Mulliner, writhed at this moment in an agony
of craven fear.

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 115

It would be possible, of course, to find
excuses for him. The thing had come upon
him very suddenly, and even the stoutest
are sometimes disconcerted by sudden peril.
Then, again, his circumstances and upbringing
had fitted him ill for such a crisis. A man who
has been pampered by Fortune from birth
becomes highly civilized : and the more highly
civilized we are, the less adroitly do we cope
with bounders of the Braddock type who
seem to belong to an earlier and rougher age.
Osbert Mulliner was simply unequal to the
task of tackling cavemen. Apart from some
slight skill at contract bridge, the only thing
he was really good at was collecting old jade’
and what a help that would be, he felt as he
mixed himself a third brandy-and soda, in a
personal combat with a man who appeared to
think it only sporting to give jaguars a chance
by fighting them one-handed.

He could see but one way out of the delicate
situation in which he had been placed. To
give Mabel Petherick-Soames up would break
his heart, but it seemed to be a straight issue
between that and his neck, and in this black
hour the voting in favour of the neck was a
positive landslide. Trembling in every limb,
my nephew Osbert went to the desk and began
to compose a letter of farewell.

He was sorry, he wrote, that he would be

n6 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

unable to see Miss Petherick-Soames on the
morrow, as they had planned, owing to his
unfortunately being called away to Australia.
He added that he was pleased to have
made her acquaintance and that if, as seemed
probable, they never saw each other again,
he would always watch her future career with
considerable interest.

Signing the letter “Yrs. truly, O. Mull-
iner," Osbert addressed the envelope and,
taking it up the street to the post-office,
dropped it in the box. Then he returned
home and went to bed.

The telephone, ringing by his bedside,
woke Osbert at an early hour next morning.
He did not answer it. A glance at his
watch had told him that the time was
half-past eight, when the first delivery of
letters is made in London. It seemed only
too likely that Mabel, having just received
and read his communication, was endeavour-
ing to discuss the matter with him over the
wire. He rose, bathed, shaved and dressed,
and had just finished a sombre breakfast
when the door opened and Parker, his man,
announced Major-General Sir Masterman
Petherick- Soames .

An icy finger seemed to travel slowly down
Osbert's backbone. He cursed the preoccupa-

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 117

tion which had made him omit to instruct
Parker to inform all callers that he was not
at home. With some difficulty, for the bones
seemed to have been removed from his legs,
he rose to receive the tall, upright, grizzled
and formidable old man who entered, and
rallied himself to play the host.

"Good morning,” he said. "Will you have
a poached egg? ”

"I will not have a poached egg,” replied
Sir Masterman. "Poached egg, indeed!
Poached egg, forsooth ! Ha ! Tchal ! Bah ! "

He spoke with such curt brusqueness that
a stranger, had one been present, might have
supposed him to belong to some league or
society for the suppression of poached eggs.
Osbert, however, with his special knowledge
of the facts, was able to interpret this brusque-
ness correctly and was not surprised when his
visitor, gazing at him keenly with a pair of
steely blue eyes which must have got him
very much disliked in military circles, plunged
at once into the subject of the letter.

“Mr. Mulliner, my niece Mabel has received
a strange communication from you.”

"Oh, she got it all right?” said Osbert,
with an attempt at ease.

“It arrived this morning. You had
omitted to stamp it. There was threepence
to pay.”

n8 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Oh, I say, I'm fearfully sorry. I

must ...”

Major-General Sir Masterman Petherick-
Soames waved down his apologies.

“It is not the monetary loss which has
so distressed my niece, but the letter's con-
tents. My niece is under the impression that
last night she and you became engaged to be
married, Mr. Mulliner.”

Osbert coughed.

"Well — er — not exactly. Not altogether.
Not, as it were ... I mean . . . You
see ...”

"I see very clearly. You have been
trifling with my niece’s affections, Mr. Mull-
iner. And I have always sworn that if ever
a man trifled with the affections of any of
my nieces, I would ...” He broke off and,
taking a lump of sugar from the bowl, bal-
anced it absently on the edge of a slice of
toast. “Did you ever hear of a Captain
Walkinshaw? ”

"No.”

“ Captain J. G. Walkinshaw? Dark man
with an eyeglass. Used to play the saxo-
phone.”

" No.”

" Ah? I thought you might have met him.
He trifled with the affections of my niece,
Hester. I horsewhipped him on the steps

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 119

of the Drone’s Club. Is the name Blenkinsop-
Bustard familiar to you?”

"No.”

"Rupert Blenkinsop-Bustard trifled with
the affections of my niece Gertrude. He was
one of the Somersetshire Blcnkinsop-Bus-
tards. Wore a fair moustache and kept
pigeons. I horsewhipped him on the steps
of the Junior Bird-Fanciers. By the way,
Mr Mulliner, what is your club?”

"The United Tade-Collectors,” quavered
Osbert.

"Has it steps? ”

" I — I believe so.”

" Good. Good.” A dreamy look came into
the General's eyes. " Well, the announcement
of your engagement to my niece Mabel will
appear in to-morrow’s Morning Post. If it
is contradicted ... Well, good morning,
Mr. Mulliner, good morning.”

And, replacing in the dish the piece of bacon
which he had been poising on a teaspoon,
Major-General Sir Masterman Petherick-
Soames left the room.

The meditation to which my nephew
Osbert had given himself up on the previous
night was as nothing to the meditation to
which he gave himself up now. For fully
an hour he must have sat, his head supported

120 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

by his hands, frowning despairingly at the
remains of the marmalade on the plate before
him. Though, like all the Mulliners, a clear
thinker, he had to confess himself completely
non-plussed. The situation had become so
complicated that after awhile he went up to
the library and tried to work it out on paper,
letting X equal himself. But even this
broif^ht no solution, and he was still ponder-
ing deeply when Parker came up to announce
lunch.

“Lunch?” said Osbert, amazed. "Is it
lunch-time already? ”

"Yes, sir. And might I be permitted to
offer my respectful congratulations and good
wishes, sir?”

"Eh?”

"On your engagement, sir. The General
happened to mention to me as I let him out
that a marriage had been arranged and would
shortly take place between yourself and Miss
Mabel Pctherick-Soames. It was fortunate
that he did so, as I was thus enabled to give
the gentleman the information he required.”

"Gentleman? ”

"A Mr. Bashford Braddock, sir. He rang
up about an hour after the General had left
and said he had been informed of your engage-
ment and wished to know if the news was
well-founded. I assured him that it was.

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 121

and he said he would be calling to see you
later. He was very anxious to know when
you would be at home. He seemed a nice,
friendly gentleman, sir.”

Osbert rose as if the chair in which he sat
had suddenly become incandescent.

"Parker!"

"Sir?”

" I am unexpectedly obliged to leave
London, Parker. I don’t know where I am
going — probably the Zambesi or Greenland —
but I shall be away a long time. I shall close
the house and give the staff an indefinite
holiday. They will receive three months’
wages in advance, and at the end of that
period will communicate with my lawyers,
Messrs. Peabody, Thrupp, Thrupp, Thrupp,
Thrupp and Peabody of Lincoln's Inn. In-
form them of this.”

"Very good, sir.”

"And, Parker.”

"Sir?”

“ I am thinking of appearing shortly in some
amateur theatricals. Kindly step round the
corner and get me a false wig, a false nose,
some false whiskers and a good stout pair
of blue spectacles.”

Osbert's plans when, after a cautious glance
up and down the street, he left the house an

122 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

hour later and directed a taxi-cab to take
him to an obscure hotel in the wildest and
least-known part of the Cromwell Road were
of the vaguest. It was only when he reached
that haven and had thoroughly wigged,
nosed, whiskered and blue-spectacled him-
self that he began to formulate a definite
plan of campaign. He spent the rest of the
day* in his room, and shortly before lunch
next morning set out for the Second-Hand
Clothing establishment of the Bros. Cohen,
near Covent Garden, to purchase a complete
traveller's outfit. It was his intention to
board the boat sailing on the morrow for
India and to potter awhile about the world,
taking in cn route Japan, South Africa,
Peru, Mexico, China, Venezuela, the Fiji
Islands and other beauty-spots.

All the Cohens seemed glad to see him when
he arrived at the shop. They clustered
about him in a body, as if guessing by instinct
that here came one of those big orders. At
this excellent emporium one may buy, in
addition to second-hand clothing, practically
anything that exists: and the difficulty — for
the brothers are all thrustful salesmen — is to
avoid doing so. At the end of five minutes,
Osbert was mildly surprised to find himself
in possession of a smoking-cap, three boxes
of poker-chips, some polo sticks, a fishing-

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULL1NER 123

rod, a concertina, a ukulele, and a bowl of
goldfish.

He clicked his tongue in annoyance. These
men appeared to him to have got quite a
wrong angle on the situation. They seemed
to think that he proposed to make his travels
one long round of pleasure. As clearly as he
was able, he tried to tell them that in the
few broken years that remained to him before
a shark or jungle-fever put an end to his
sorrows he would have little heart for polo,
for poker, or for playing the concertina
while watching the gambols of goldfish.
They might just as well offer him, he said
querulously, a cocked hat or a sewing-
machine.

Instant activity prevailed among the
brothers.

" Fetch the gentleman his sewing-machine,
Isadore."

" And, while you’re getting him the cocked
hat, Lou,” said Irving, “ask the customer in
the shoe department if he’ll be kind enough
to step this way. You’re in luck,” he assured
Osbert. “ If you're going travelling in foreign
parts, he’s the very man to advise you.
You've heard of Mr. Braddock? ”

There . was very little of Osbert's face
visible behind his whiskers, but that little
paled beneath its tan.

124 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Mr. B-b-b . . .?”

"That’s right. Mr. Braddock, the ex-
plorer.”

"Air!” said Osbert. "Give me air!”

He made rapidly for the door, and was
about to charge through when it opened to
admit a tall, distinguished-looking man of
military appearance.

"Shop!” cried the newcomer in a clear,
patrician voice, and Osbert reeled back
against a pile of trousers. It was Major-
General Sir Masterman Petherick-Soames.

A platoon of Cohens advanced upon him,
Isadore hastily snatching up a fireman's
helmet and Irving a microscope and a couple
of jig-saw puzzles. The General waved them
aside.

"Do you,” he asked, "keep horsewhips?”

"Yes, sir. Plenty of horsewhips.”

"I want a nice strong one with a medium
sized handle and lots of spring,” said Major-
General Sir Masterman Petherick-Soames.

And at this moment Lou returned, followed
by Bashford Braddock,

"Is this the gentleman?” said Bashford
Braddock genially. “You’re going abroad,
sir, I understand. Delighted if I can be of
any service.”

"Bless my soul,” said Major-General Sir
Masterman Petherick-Soames. "Bushford?

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 125

It's so confoundedly dark in here, I didn’t
recognize you.”

" Switch on the light, Irving,” said Isadore.

“No, don't,” said Osbert. “My eyes are
weak.”

“If your eyes are weak you ought not to
be going to the Tropics,” said Bashford
Braddock.

“This gentleman a friend of yours?” asked
the General.

“ Oh, no. I’m just going to help him to
buy an outfit.”

“The gentleman’s already got a smoking-cap,
poker chips, polo sticks, a fishing-rod, a con-
certina, a ukulele, a bowl of goldfish, a cocked
hat and a sewing machine,” said Isadore.

"Ah?” said Bashford Braddock. “Then
all he will require now is a sun helmet, a pair of
puttees, and a pot of ointment for relieving
alligator-bites.”

With the rapid decision of an explorer who
is buying things for which somebody else
is going to pay, he completed the selection of
Osbert’s outfit.

"And what brings you here, Bashford?”
asked the General.

" Me? Oh, I looked in to buy a pair of
spiked boots. I want to trample on a snake.”

“An odd coincidence. I came here to buy
a horsewhip to horsewhip a snake.”

126 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"A bad week-end for snakes,” said Bash-
ford Braddock.

The General nodded gravely.

” Of course, my snake,” he said, " may prove
not to be a snake. In classifying him as a
snake I may have misj udged him. In that case
I shall not require this horsewhip. Still, they’re
ahvsiys useful to have about the house.”

" Undoubtedly. Lunch with me, General?”

“Delighted, my dear fellow.”

"Goodbye, sir,” said Bashford Braddock,
giving Osbert a friendly nod. “Glad I was
able to be of some use. When do you sail? ”

"Gentleman’s sailing to-morrow morning
on the Rajputana,” said Isadore.

“What!” cried Major-General Sir Master-
man Petherick-Soames. “Bless my soul! I
didn’t realize you were going to India. I
was out there for years and can give you all
sorts of useful hints. The old Rajputana?
Why, I know the purser well. I’ll come and
see you off and have a chat with him. No
doubt I shall be able to get you a number of
little extra attentions. No, no, my dear
fellow, don’t thank me. I have a good deal
on my mind at the moment, and it will be a
relief to do somebody a kindness.”

It seemed to Osbert, as he crawled back to
the shelter of his Cromwell Road bedroom,

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 127

that Fate was being altogether too rough with
him. Obviously, if Sir Masterman Petherick-
Soames intended to come down to the boat to
see him off, it would be madness to attempt to
sail. On the deck of a liner under the noon-
day sun the General must inevitably pene-
trate his disguise. His whole scheme of
escape must be cancelled and another
substituted. Osbcrt ordered two pots of
black coffee, tied a wet handkerchief round
his forehead, and plunged once more into
thought.

It has been frequently said of the Mulliners
that you may perplex but you cannot baffle
them. It was getting on for dinner-time
before Osbert finally decided upon a plan of
action : but this plan, he perceived as he
examined it, was far superior to the first one.

He had been wrong, he saw, in thinking of
flying to foreign climes. For one who desired
as fervently as he did never to see Major-
General Sir Masterman Petherick-Soames
again in this world, the only real refuge was
a London suburb. Any momentary whim
might lead Sir Masterman to pack a suit-
case and take the next boat to the Far East,
but nothing would ever cause him to take a
tram for Dulwich, Cricklewood, Winchmore
Hill, Brixton, Balham or Surbiton. In those
trackless wastes Osbert would be safe.

128 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Osbert decided to wait till late at night;
then go back to his house in South Audley
Street, pack his collection of old jade and
a few other necessaries, and vanish into the
unknown.

It was getting on for midnight when,
creeping warily to the familiar steps, he
in&rted his latchkey in the familiar key-
hole. He had feared that Bashford Braddock
might be watching the house, but there were
no signs of him. He slipped swiftly into the
dark hall and closed the front door softly
behind him.

It was at this moment that he became
aware that from under the door of the dining-
room at the other end of the hall there was
stealing a thin stream of light.

For an instant, this evidence that the house
was not, as he had supposed, unoccupied
startled Osbert considerably. Then, re-
covering himself, he understood what must
have happened. Parker, his man, instead of
leaving as he had been told to do, was taking
advantage of his employer's presumed absence
from London to stay on and do some informal
entertaining. Osbert, thoroughly incensed,
hurried to the dining-room and felt that his
suspicion had been confirmed. On the table

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 129

were set out all the materials, except food and
drink, of a cosy little supper for two. The
absence of food and drink was accounted for,
no doubt, by the fact that Parker and —
Osbert saw only too good reason to fear — his
lady-friend were down in the larder, fetching
them.

Osbert boiled from his false wig to the soles
of his feet with a passionate fury. So this
was the sort of thing that went on the moment
his back was turned, was it? There were
heavy curtains hiding the window, and be-
hind these he crept. It was his intention to
permit the feast to begin and then, stepping
forth like some avenging Nemesis, to con-
front his erring man-servant and put it
across him in no uncertain manner. Bash-
ford Braddock and Major-General Sir Master-
man Petherick-Soames, with their towering
stature and whipcord muscles, might intimi-
date him, but with a shrimp like Parker he
felt that he could do himself justice. Osbert
had been through much in the last forty-
eight hours, and unpleasantness with a man
who, like Parker, stood a mere five feet five in
his socks appeared to him rather in the nature
of a tonic.

He had not been waiting long when there
came to his ears the sound of footsteps out-
side. He softly removed his wig, his nose.

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

130

his whiskers and his blue spectacles. There
must be no disguise to soften the shock when
Parker found himself confronted. Then, peep-
ing through the curtains, he prepared to spring.

Osbert did not spring. Instead, he shrank
back like a more than ordinarily diffident
tortoise into its shell, and tried to achieve the
maximum of silence by breathing through his
ears. For it was no Parker who had entered,
no frivolous lady-friend, but a couple of
plug-uglies of such outstanding physique that
Bashford Braddock might have been the
little brother of either of them.

Osbert stood petrified. He had never seen
a burglar before, and he wished, now that
he was seeing these, that it could have been
arranged for him to do so through a telescope.
At this close range, they gave him much the
same feeling the prophet Daniel must have
had on entering the lions' den, before his
relations with the animals had been established
on their subsequent basis of easy camara-
derie. He was thankful that when the breath
which he had been holding for some eighty
seconds at length forced itself out in a loud
gasp, the noise was drowned by the popping
of a cork.

It was from a bottle of Osbert 's best
Bollinger that this cork had been removed.
The marauders, he was able to see, were men

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 13 1

who believed in doing themselves well. In
these days when almost everybody is on
some sort of diet it is rarely that one comes
across the old-fashioned type of diner who
does not worry about balanced meals and
calories but just squares his shoulders and
goes at it till his eyes bubble. Osbert's two
guests plainly belonged to this nearly obsolete
species. They were drinking out of tankards
and eating three varieties of meat simul-
taneously, as if no such thing as a high blood-
pressure had ever been invented. A second
pop announced the opening of another quart
of champagne.

At the outset of the proceedings, there had
been little or nothing in the way of supper-
table conversation. But now, the first keen
edge of his appetite satisfied by about three
pounds of ham, beef and mutton, the burglar
who sat nearest to Osbert was able to relax.
He looked about him approvingly.

"Nice little crib, this, Ernest,” he said.

" R! " replied his companion — a man of few
words, and those somewhat impeded by cold
potatoes and bread.

“Must have been some real swells in here
one time and another.”

“R!”

“Baronets and such, I wouldn’t be sur-
prised.”

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

132

"R!” said the second burglar, helping him-
self to more champagne and mixing in a little
port, sherry, Italian vermuth, old brandy
and green Chartreuse to give it body.

The first burglar looked thoughtful.

“Talking of baronets,” he said, “a thing
I've often wondered is — well, suppose you're
having a dinner, see? ”

“ft!”

“As it might be in this very room.”

“R!”

“Well, would a baronet’s sister go in before
the daughter of the younger son of a peer?
I’ve often wondered about that.”

The second burglar finished his cham-
pagne, port, sherry, Italian vermuth, old
brandy and green Chartreuse, and mixed
himself another.

"Go in?”

“Go in to dinner.”

"If she was quicker on her feet, she would,”
said the second burglar. “She’d get to the
door first. Stands to reason.”

The first burglar raised his eyebrows.

"Ernest,” he said coldly, “you talk like
an uneducated son of a what-not. Haven't you
never been taught nothing about the rules and
manners of good Society? ”

The second burglar flushed. It was plain
that the rebuke had touched a tender spot.

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 133

There was a strained silence. The first
burglar resumed his meal. The second bur-
glar watched him with a hostile eye. He
had the air of a man who is waiting for his
chance, and it was not long before he found it.

“Harold,” he said.

"Well?” said the first burglar.

“Don’t gollup your food, Harold,” said the
second burglar.

The first burglar started. His eyes gleamed
with sudden fury. His armour, like his com-
panion’s, had been pierced.

"Who’s golluping his food?”

“You are.”

"Iam?”

"Yes, you."

"Who, me?”

"R!”

"Golluping my food? ”

"R! Like a pig or something.”

It was evident to Osbcrt, peeping warily
through the curtains, that the generous
fluids which these two men had been drinking
so lavishly had begun to have their effect.
They spoke thickly, and their eyes had be-
come red and swollen.

"I may not know all about baronets’
younger sisters,” said the burglar Ernest,
"but I don’t gollup my food like pigs or
something.”

134 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

And, as if to drive home the reproach, he
picked up the leg of mutton and began to
gnaw it with an affected daintiness.

The next moment the battle had been
joined. The spectacle of the other’s priggish
object-lesson was too much for the burglar
Harold. He plainly resented tuition in the
amenities from one on whom he had always
looked as a social inferior. With a swift
movement of the hand he grasped the bottle
before him and bounced it smartly on his
colleague’s head.

Osbert Mulliner cowered behind the curtain.
The sportsman in him whispered that lie was
missing something good, for ring-seats to
view which many men would have paid large
sums, but he could not nerve himself to look
out. However, there was plenty of interest
in the thing, even if you merely listened.
The bumps and crashes seemed to indicate
that the two principals were hitting one
another with virtually everything in the room
except the wall-paper and the large side-
board. Now they appeared to be grappling
on the lioor, anon fighting at long range with
bottles. Words and combinations of whose
existence he had till then been unaware,
floated to Osbcrt’s ears: and more and more
he asked himself, as the combat proceeded:
What would the harvest be?

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 135

And then, with one titanic crash, the battle
ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

It was some moments before Osbert Mull-
iner could bring himself to peep from behind
the curtains. When he did so, he seemed to be
gazing upon one of those Orgy scenes which
have done so much to popularize the motion-
pictures. Scenically, the thing was perfect.
All that was needed to complete the resem-
blance was a few attractive-looking girls with
hardly any clothes on.

He came out and gaped down at the ruins.
The burglar Harold was lying with his head
in the fireplace : the burglar Ernest was
doubled up under the table : and it seemed to
Osbert almost absurd to think that these were
the same hearty fellows who had come into
the room to take pot-luck so short a while
before. Harold had the appearance of a man
who has been passed through a wringer.
Ernest gave the illusion of having recently be-
come entangled in some powerful machinery.
If, as was probable, they were known to the
police, it would take a singularly keen-eyed
constable to recognize them now.

The thought of the police reminded Osbert
of his duty as a citizen. He went to the
telephone and called up the nearest station
and was informed that representatives of the

136 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Law would be round immediately to scoop
up the remains. He went back to the
dining-room to wait, but its atmosphere
jarred upon him. He felt the need of
fresh air : and, going to the front door,
he opened it, and stood upon the steps,
breathing deeply.

£nd, as he stood there, a form loomed
through the darkness and a heavy hand fell
on his arm.

“Mr. Mulliner, I think? Mr. Mulliner, if
I mistake not ? Good evening, Mr. Mulliner,”
said the voice of Bashford Braddock. "A
word with you, Mr. Mulliner.”

Osbert returned his gaze without flinching.
He was conscious of a strange, almost uncanny
calm. The fact was that, everything in this
world being relative, he was regarding Bash-
ford Braddock at this moment as rather an
undersized little pipsqueak, and wondering
why he had ever worried about the man.
To one who had come so recently from the
society of Harold and Ernest, Bashford
Braddock seemed like one of Singer’s Midgets.

“Ah, Braddock? ” said Osbert.

At this moment, with a grinding of brakes,
a van stopped before the door and policemen
began to emerge.

“Mr. Mulliner?” asked the sergeant.

Osbert greeted him affably.

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 137

"Come in,” he said. "Come in. Go
straight through. You will find them in the
dining-room. I'm afraid I had to handle
them a little roughly. You had better
'phone for a doctor.”

"Bad are they?”

"A little the worse for wear.”

"Well, they asked for it,” said the sergeant.

"Exactly, sergeant,” said Osbert. " Rem
acU tetigisti."

Bashford Braddock had been standing
listening to this exchange of remarks with a
somewhat perplexed air.

"What’s all this?” he said.

Osbert came out of his thoughts with a
start.

"You still here, my dear chap? ”

1 am.

"Want to see me about anything, dear boy?
Something on your mind? ”

" I just want a quiet five minutes alone with
you, Mr. Mulliner.”

"Certainly, my dear old fellow,” said
Osbert. “ Certainly, certainly, certainly.
Just wait till these policemen have gone and
I will be at your disposal. We have had a
little burglary.”

"Burg — ," Bashford Braddock was begin-
ning, when there came out onto the steps a
couple of policemen. They were supporting

i 3 8 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

the burglar Harold, and were followed by
others assisting the burglar Ernest. The
sergeant, coming last, shook his head at
Osbert a little gravely.

"You ought to be careful, sir,” he said.
"I don’t say these fellows didn’t deserve all
you gave them, but you want to watch your-
self. One of these days ...”

‘^Perhaps I did overdo it a little,” admitted
Osbert. "But I am rather apt to see red
on these occasions One’s fighting blood,
you know. Well, good-night, Sergeant, good
night. And now,” lie said, taking Bashford
Braddock’s arm in a genial grip, "what was
it you wanted to talk to me about? Come
into the house. We shall be all alone there.
I gave the staff a holiday. There won’t be
a soul except ourselves.”

Bashford Braddock released his arm. He
seemed embarrassed. His face, as the light
of the street lamp shone upon it, was strangely
pale.

"Did you ” He gulped a little. “Was

that really you?”

"Really me? Oh, you mean those two
fellows. Oh, yes, I found them in my dining-
room, eating my food and drinking my wine
as cool as you please, and naturally I set about
them. But the sergeant was quite right.
I do get too rough when I lose my temper.

ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER 139

I must remember,” he said, taking out his
handkerchief and tying a knot in it, “to
cure myself of that. The fact is, I sometimes
don’t know my own strength. But you
haven’t told me what it is you want to see
me about? ”

. Bash ford Braddock swallowed twice in
quick succession. He edged past Osbert to
the foot of the steps. He seemed oddly
uneasy. His face had now taken on a
greenish tinge.

“Oh, nothing, nothing.”

“But, my dear fellow,” protested Osbert,
“it must have been something important to
bring you round at this time of night.”

Bash ford Braddock gulped.

“Well, it was like this. I — er — saw the
announcement of your engagement in the

paper this morning, and I thought 1 — er

— just thought I would look in and ask
you what you would like for a wedding-
present.”

"My dear chap! Much too kind of you.”

“So— cr — so silly if I gave a fish-slice and
found that everybody else had given fish-
slices.”

"That's true. Well, why not come inside
and talk it over.”

"No, I won’t come in, thanks. I’d rather
not come in. Perhaps you will write and

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

140

let me know. Poste Restante, Bongo on the
Congo, will find me. I am returning there
immediately."

"Certainly,” said Osbert. He looked down
at his companion’s feet "My dear old lad,
what on earth are you wearing those extra-
ordinary boots for? "

“Corns,” said Bashford Braddock.

'•Why the spikes? ”

"They relieve the pressure on the feet.”

"I see, well, good night, Mr. Braddock.”

" Good night, Mr. Mulliner.”

"Good night,” said Osbert.

“Good night,” said Bashford Braddock.

V

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH
COURT

T HE poet who was spending the summer
at the Anglers’ Rest had just begun to
read us his new sonnet-sequence when
the door of the bar-parlour opened and
there entered a young man in gaiters. He
came quickly in and ordered beer. In one
hand he was carrying a double-barrelled gun,
in the other a posy of dead rabbits. These he
dropped squasmlyTo the floor : and the poet,
stopping in mid-sentence, took one long,
earnest look at the remains. Then, wincing
painfully, he turned a light green and closed
his eyes. It was not until the banging of the
door announced the visitor’s departure that
he came to life again.

Mr. Mulliner regarded him sympathetically
over his hot Scotch and lemon.

“You appear upset,” he said.

"A little,” admitted the poet. “A momen-
tary malaise. It may be a purely personal

< 4 *

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

142

prejudice, but I confess to preferring rabbits
with rather more of their contents inside
them.”

"Many sensitive souls in your line of
business hold similar views,” Mr. Mulliner
assured him. "My niece Charlotte did.”

"It is my temperament,” said the poet.
"I dislike all dead things — particularly when,
as ±h the case of the above rabbits, they have
so obviously, so — shall I say? — blatantly
made the Great Change. Give me,” he went
on, the greenish tinge fading from his face,
"life and joy and beauty.”

5 "Just what my niece Charlotte used to
say.”

"Oddly enough, that thought forms the
theme of the second sonnet in my sequence
— which, now that the young gentleman
with the portable Morgue has left us, I
will ...”

“My niece Charlotte,” said Mr. Mulliner,
with quiet firmness, “ was one of those
gentle, dreamy, wistful girls who take what
I have sometimes felt to be a mean advan-
tage of having an ample private income to
write VjgneUfiS in Verse for the artistic
weeklies. Charlotte’s Vignettes in Verse had
a wide vogue among the editors of London’s
higher-browed but less prosperous periodi-
cals. . Directly these frugal men realized that

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 143

she was willing to supply unstinted Vignettes
gratis, for the mere pleasure of seeing herself
in print, they were all over her. The conse-
quence was that before long she had begun
to move freely in the most refined literary
circles: and one day, at a little luncheon at
the Crushed Pansy (The Restaurant With A
Soul), she found herself seated next to a
godlike young man at the sight of whom
something seemed to go off inside her like a
spring."

"Talking of Spring ..." said the poet.

"Cupid,” proceeded Mr. Mulliner, "has
always found the family to which I belong’
a ready mark for his bow. Our hearts are
warm, our passions quick. It is not too much
to say that my niece Charlotte was in love
with this young man before she had finished
spearing the first anchovy out of the hors-
d’oeuvres dish. He was intensely spiritual-
looking, with a broad, white forehead and
eyes that seemed to Charlotte not so much
eyes as a couple of holes punched in the sur-
face of a beautiful soul. He wrote, she
learned, Pastels in Prose: and his name, if
she had caught it correctly at the moment
of their introduction, was Aubrey Trefusis.

Friendship ripens quickly at the Crushed
Pansy. The poulet roti cm cresson had scarcely
been distributed before the young m^n was

144 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

telling Charlotte Jii s _ h oe.es, hisjears 4< and the
story of. his„ boyhood. And she was amazed
to find that he sprang — not from a long line
of artists but from an ordinary, conven-
tional county family oi the type that cares
for nothing except hunting and shooting.

"You can readily imagine,” he said, help-
ing her to Brussels sprouts, "how intensely
suclf an environment jarred upon my un-
folding spirit. My family are greatly re-
spected in the neighbourhood, but I personally
have always looked upon them as a gang of
blood-imbrued plug-uglies. My views on
Kindness to animals are rigid. My impulse,
on encountering a rabbit, is to offer it lettuce.
To my family, on the other hand, a rabbit
seems incomplete without a deposit of small
shot in it. My father, I believe, has cut
off more assorted birds in their prime than
any other man in the Midlands. A whole
morning was spoiled for me last week by the
sight of a photograph of him in the Tatler,
looking rather severely at a dying duck. My
elder brother Reginald spreads destruction
in every branch of the animal kingdom. And
my younger brother Wilfred is, I understand,
working his way up to the larger fauna by
killing sparrows with an air-gun. Spiritually,
one might just as well live in Chicago as
at Bludleigh Court.”

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 145

"Bludleigh Court?” cried Charlotte.

"The moment I was twenty-one and came
into a modest but sufficient inheritance, I
left the place and went to London to lead
th e li f e literary. The family, of course, were
appalled. My uncle Francis, I remember,
tried to reason with me for hours. Uncle
Francis, you see, used to be a famous big-
game hunter. They tell me he has shot
more gnus than any other man who ever went
to Africa. In fact, until recently he virtu-
ally never stopped shooting gnus. Now, I
hear, he has developed lumbago and is down
at Bludleigh treating it with Riggs's Super-
fine Emulsion and sun-baths.”

"But is Bludleigh Court your home?”

"That’s right. Bludleigh Court, Lesser
Bludleigh, near Goresby-on-the-Ouse, Bed-
fordshire.”

"But Bludleigh Court belongs to Sir
Alexander Bassinger.”

"My name is really Bassinger. I adopted
the pen-name of Trefusis to spare the family's
feelings. But how do you come to know of
the place? ”

"I’m going down there next week for a
visit. My mother was an old friend of Lady
Bassinger.”

Aubrey was astonished. And, being, like
all writers of Pastels in Prose, a neat phrase-

146 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

maker, he said what a small world it was,
after all.

“Well, well, well!” he said.

“From what you tell me,” said Charlotte,
"I’m afraid I shall not enjoy my visit. If
there’s one thing I loathe, it’s anything con-
nected with sport.”

“Two minds with but a single thought,”
saief Aubrey. “Look here, I’ll tell you what.
I haven't been near Bludleigh for years, but
if you’re going there, why, dash it. I’ll come
too — aye, even though it means meeting my
uncle Francis.”

“You will?”

"I certainly will. I don’t consider it
safe that a girl of your exquisite refinement
and sensibility should be dumped down
at an abattoir like Bludleigh Court with-
out a~^ KTncIred spirit to lend her moral
stability.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you.” Ilis voice was grave.
“That house exercises a spell.”

“A what?”

“A sj jell. A ghastly spell that saps the
strongest humanitarian principles. Who
knows what effect it might have upon you,
should you go there without someone like
me to stand by you and guide you in your
hour of need?”

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 147

“What nonsense!”

“Well, all I can tell you is that once, when
1 was a boy, a high official of Our Dumb
Brothers’ League of Mercy arrived there
jfiteish on a Friday night, and at two-fifteen
on the Saturday afternoon he was the life
and soul of an informal party got up for the
purpose of drawing one of the local badgers
out of an upturned barrel.”

Charlotte laughed merrily.

"The spell will not affect me,” she said.

“Nor me, of course,” said Aubrey. “But
all the same, I would prefer to be by your
side, if you don’t mind.”

“Mind, Mr. Bassinger!” breathed Char-
lotte softly, and was thrilled to note that
at the words and the look with which she
accompanied them this man to whom — for,
as I say, we Mulliners are quick workers —
she had already given her heart, quivered
violently. It seemed to her that in those
soulful eyes of his she had seen the love-
light.

Bludlcigh Court, when Charlotte reached
it some days later, proved to be a noble old
pile of Tudor architecture, situated in rolling
parkland and flanked by pleasant gardens
leading to a lake with a tree-fringed boat-
house. Inside, it was comfortably furnished

148 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

and decorated throughout with groves of
glass cases containing the goggle-eyed rem-
nants of birds and beasts assassinated at one
time or another by Sir Alexander Bassinger
and his son, Reginald. From every wall there
peered down with an air of mild reproach
selected portions of the gnus, moose, elks,
zebus, antelopes, giraffes, mountain goats
and wapiti which had had the misfortune
to meet Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake
befoie lumbago spoiled him for the chase.
The cemetery also included a few stuffed
sparrows, which showed that little Wilfred
was doing his bit.

The li: <t two days of her visit Charlotte
passed mostly in the society of Colonel
Pashley-Drake, the uncle Francis to whom
Aubrey had alluded. He seemed to have
taken a paternal fancy to her: and, lithclv
though she dodged down back-stairs and
passages, she generally found him breathing
heavily at her side. lie was a red-faced,
almost circular man, with eyes like a prawn's,
and he spoke to her freely of lumbago, gnus
and Aubrey.

“So you’re a friend of my young nephew? ”
he said, snorting twice in a rather unpleasant
manner. It was plain that he disapproved
of the pastel-artist. “Shouldn't see too much
of him, if I were you. Not the sort of fellow

UNPLEASANTNESS At BLUDLEIGH 149

I’d like any daughter of mine to get friendly
with.”

“You are quite \yrong,” said Charlotte
warmly. "You have only to gaze into Mr.
Bassinger’s eyes to see that his morals are
above reproach.”

"I never gaze into his eyes,” replied
Colonel Pashley-Drake. "Don’t like his eyes.
Wouldn’t gaze into them if you paid me. I
maintain his whole outlook on life is morbid
and unwholesome. I like a man to be a clean,
strong, upstanding Englishman who can look
his gnu in the face and put an ounce of lead
in it.”

"Life,” said Charlotte coldly, “is not all
gnus.”

"You imply that there are also wapiti,
moose, zebus and mountain-goats? ” said
Sir Francis. "Well, maybe you’re right. All
the same, I’d give the fellow a wide berth,
if I were you.”

"So far from doing so,” replied Charlotte
proudly, "I am about to go for a stroll with
him by the lake at this very moment.”

And, turning away with a petulant t oss
of her head, she moved off to meet Aubrey,
who was hurrying towards her across the
terrace.

"I am so glad you came, Mr. Bassinger,”
she said to him as they walked together in

1 5 o MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

the direction of the lake. “I was beginning
to find your uncle Francis a little excessive.”

Aubrey nodded sympathetically. He had
observed her in conversation with his relative
and his heart had gone out to her.

‘‘Two minutes of my uncle Francis,” he
saiji, ‘‘is considered by the best judges a
good medium close for an adult. So you
find him trying, eh? I was wondering what
impression my family had made on you.”

Charlotte was silent for a moment.

"How relative everything is in this world,”
she said pensively. "When I first met your
father, I thought I had never seen anybody
more completely loathsome. Then I was
introduced to your brother Reginald, and
I realized that, after all, your father might
have been considerably worse. And, just
as I was thinking that Reginald was the
furthest point possible, along came your
uncle Fiancis, and Reginald’s quiet charm
seemed to leap out at me like a beacon on
a dark night. Tell me,” she said, "has
no one ever thought of doing anything about
your uncle Francis?”

Aubrey shook his head gently.

"It is pretty generally recognised now
that he is beyond the reach of human science.
The only thing to do seems to be to let him
go on till he eventually runs down.”

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 151

They sat together on a rustic bench over-
looking the water. It was a lovely morning.
The sun shone on the little wavelets which
the sighing breeze drove gently to the shore.
A dreamy stillness had fallen on the world,
broken only by the distant sound of Sir
Alexander Bassinger murdering magpies, of
Reginald Bassinger encouraging dogs to
eviscerate a rabbit, of Wilfred busy among
The sparrows, and a monotonous droning
'noise from the upper terrace, which was
Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake telling
Lady Bassinger what to do with the dead
gnu.

Aubrey was the first to break the silence.

"Ilow lovely the world is, Miss Mulliner.”

"Yes, isn’t 'it!"

"How softly the breeze caresses yonder
water.”

"Yes, doesn’t it!”

“How fragrant a scent of wild flowers it
has.”

"Yes, hasn’t it!”

They weic silent again.

"O11 such a day,” said Aubrey, " the mind
seems to turn irresistibly to Love.”

"Love?” said Charlotte, her heart begin-
ning to flutter.

"Love,” said Aubrey. "Tell me, Miss
Mulliner, have you ever thought of Love?”

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

* 5 *

He took her hand. Her head was bent,
and with the toe of her dainty shoe she
toyed with a passing snail.

"Life, Miss Mulliner,” said Aubrey, "is
a Sahara through which we all must
pass. We start at the Cairo of the cradle
an£ we travel on to the — er — well, we go
travelling on.”

"Yes, don’t we!” said Charlotte.

"Afar we can see the distant goal . . .”

"Yes, can't we!”

"... and would fain reach it.”

"Yes, wouldn't weT 75

"But the way is rough and weary. We
have to battle through the sand-storms of
Destiny, face with what courage we may
the howling simoons of Fate. And very
unpleasant it all is. But sometimes in the
Sahara of Life, if we are fortunate, we come
upon the Oasis of Love. That oasis, when
I had all but lost hope, I readied at one-
fifteen on the afternoon of Tuesday, the
twenty-second of last month. There comes
a time in the life of every man when he sees
Happiness beckoning to him and must grasp
it. Miss Mulliner, I have something to ask
you which I have been trying to ask ever
since the day when we two first met. Miss
Mulliner . . . Charlotte . . . Will you be
my . . . Gosh! Look at that whacking

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 153

great rat ! Loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo 1 ’ '

said Aubrey, changing the subject.

Once, in her childhood, a sportive play-
mate had secretly withdrawn the chair on
which Charlotte Mulliner was preparing to
seat herself. Years had passed, but the
recollection of the incident remained green
in her memory. In frosty weather she could
still feel the old wound. And now, as Aubrey
Bassinger suddenly behaved in this remark-
able manner, she experienced the same sen-
sation again. It was as though something
blunt and heavy had hit her on the head
at the exact moment when she was slipping
on a banana-skin.

She stared round-eyed at Aubrey. He had
released her hand, sprung to his feet, and
now, armed with her parasol, was beating
furiously in the lush grass at the waterside.
And every little while his mouth would open,
his head would go back, and uncouth sounds
would proceed from his slavering jaws.

“Yoicks! Yoicks! Yoicks! ” cried Aubrey.

And again,

"Tally-ho! Hard For’ard! Tally-ho!"

Presently the fever seemed tv) pass. He
straightened himself and came back to where
she stood.

"It must have got away into a hole or
something," he said, removing a bead of

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

*54

perspiration from his forehead with the ferrule
of the parasol. "The fact of the matter
is, it’s silly ever to go out in the country
without a good dog. If only I’d had a
nice, nippy terrier with me, I might have
obtained some solid results. As it is, a
fine rat — gone — just like that! Oh, well,
that^ Life, I suppose.” He paused. "Let
me see,” he said. " Where was I?”

And then it was as though he waked from
a trance. His llushec. face paled.

"I say,” he stammered, “I’m afraid you
must think me most awfully rude.”

" Pray do not mention it,” said Charlotte
coldly.

"Oh, but you must. Dashing off like
that.”

"Not at all.”

"What I was eoing to say, when I was
interrupted, was, will you be my wife?”
"Oh?”

"Yes.”

"Well, I won’t.”

"You won’t?”

"No. Never.” Charlotte’s voice was tense
with a scorn which she did not attempt
to conceal. "So this is what you were all
the time, Mr. Bassingcr— a scriet sports-
man!”

Aubrey quivered from head to foot.

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLE 1 GH 155

"I’m not! I'm not! It was the hideous
spell of this ghastly house that overcame
me.”

“Pah!”

"What did you say?”

"I said ‘ Pah'?”

"Why did you say * Pah'?”

"Because,” said Charlotte, with flashing
eyes, “I do not believe you. Your story is
thin and fishy.”

"But it's the truth. It was as if some
hypnotic influence had gripped me, forcing
me to act against all my higher inclinations.
Can't you understand? Would you condemn
me for a moment’s passing weakness? Do
you think,” lie cried passionately, " that the
real Aubrey Bassinger would raise a hand to
touch a rat, save in the way of kindness? I
love rats, I tell you— love them. I used to
keep them as a boy. White ones with pink
eyes.”

Charlotte shook her head. Her face was
cold and haul.

"Good-bye, Mr. Bassinger,” she said.
“From this instant we meet as strangers.”

She turned and was gone. And Aubrey
Bassinger, covering his face with his hands,
sank on the bench, feeling like a sa nd-bagged
leper.

156 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

The mind of Charlotte Mulliner, in the
days which followed the painful scene which
I have just described, was torn, as you
may well imagine, with conflicting emotions.
For a time, as was natural, anger predomin-
ated. But after awhile sadness overcame
indignation. She mourned for her lost
happiness.

And yet, she asked herself, how else could
she have acted? She had worshipped Aubrey
Bassinger. She had set him upon a pedestal,
looked up to him as a great white soul. She
had supposed him one who lived, far above
this world’s coarseness and grime, on a
rarified plane of his own, thinking beautiful
thoughts. Instead of which, it now ap-
peared, he went about the place chasing
rats with parasols . W'liat could she have
done but s purn him?

That there lurked in the atmosphere of
Bludleigh Court a sinister influence that
sapped the principles of the most humani-
tarian and sent them ravening to and fro,
seeking for prey, she declined to believe. The
theory was pure banana-oil. If such an
influence was in operation at Bludleigh, why
had it not affected her?

No, if Aubrey Bassinger chased rats with
parasols, it could only mean that he was
one of Nature’s rat-chasers. And to such

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 157

a one, cost what it might to refuse, she could
never confide her heart.

Few things are more embarrassing to a
highly-strung girl than to be for any length
of time in the same house with a man whose
love she has been compelled to decline, and
Charlotte would have given much to be able
to leave Bludlcigh Court. But there was,
it seemed, to be a garden-party on the fol-
lowing Tuesday, and Lady Bassinger had
urged her so strongly to stay on for it that
departure was out of the question.

To fill the leaden moments, she immersed
herself in her work. She had a long-standing
commission to supply the Animal-Lovers
Gazette with a poem for its Christmas num-
ber, and to the task of writing this she pro-
ceeded to devote herself. And gradually
the ecstasy of literary composition eased her
pain.

The days .crept by. Old Sir Alexander
continued to maltreat magpies. Reginald
and the local rabbits fought a never-ceasing
battle, they striving to keep up the birth-
rate, he to reduce it. Colonel Pashley-Drake
maundered on about gnus he had met. And
"Aubrey dragged himself about the house,
looking licked to a splinter. Eventually
Tuesday came, and with it the garden-
party.

IS8 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Lady Bassinger's annual garden party was
one of the big events of the countryside.
By four o’clock all that was bravest and
fairest for miles around had assembled on
the big lawn. But Charlotte, though she
had stayed on specially to be present, was
not one of the gay throng. At about the time
wheft the first strawberry was being dipped
in its cream, she was up in her room, staring
with bewildered eyes at a letter which had
arrived by the second post.

The Animal-Lovers Gazette had turned her
poem down!

Yes, turned it down flat, in spite of the
fact that it had been commissioned and that
she was not asking a penny for it. Accom-
panying the rejected manuscript was a curt
note fiom the editor, in which he said
that he feared its tone might offend his
readers.

Charlotte was stunned. She w;is not
accustomed to having her efforts rejected.
This one, moreover, had seemed to her so
particularly good. A hard judge of her own
work, she had said to herself, as she licked
the envelope, that this time, if never before,
she had delivcied the goods.

She unfolded the manuscript and re-read

it.

Tt ran as follows:

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH

GOOD GNUS
[A Vignette in Verse)

BY

ClIAKLOTTE MULLINER

When cares attack and life seems black,
I low sweet it is to pot a yak.

Or puncture hares and grizzly bears,
And others I could mention :

I'ut in my Animals "Who's Who"

No name stands higher than the Gnu :
And each new gnu that comes in view
Receives my prompt attention.

When Afric's sun is sinking low.

And shadows wander to and fro,

And everywhere there's in the air
A hush that's deep and solemn;
Then is the time good men and true
With View Ilalloo pursue the gnu :

('I he safest spot to put vour shot
Is through the spinal column).

To take the creature by surprise
Wo must adopt some rude 1 disguise,
Although deceit is never sweet,
And falsehoods don't attract us:

So, as with gun in hand you wait,
Remember to impersonate

A tuft of grass, a mountain-pass,
A kopje or a cactus.

i6o

MR. MULL1NER SPEAKING

A brief suspense, and then at last
The waiting’s o'er, the vigil past :

A careful aim. A spurt of flame.

It’s done. You’ve pulled the trigger.

And one more gnu, so fair and frail.

Has handed in its dinner-pail :

(The females all are rather small.

The males are somewhat bigger).

Charlotte laid the manuscript down, frown-
ing. She chafed at the imbecility of editors.
Less than ever was she able to understand
what anyone could find in it to cavil at.
Tone likely to offend? What did the man
mean about the tone being likely to offend?
She had never heard such nonsense in her
life. How could the tone possibly offend?
It was unexceptionable. The whole poem
breathed that clean, wholesome, healthy
spirit of Sport which has made England what
it is. And the thing was not only lyrically
perfect, but educational as well. It told the
young reader, anxious to shoot gnus but
uncertain of the correct procedure, exactly
what he wanted tc know.

She bit her lip. Well, if this Animal-Lovers
bird didn’t know a red-hot contribution when
he saw one, she would jolly well find some-
body else who did — and quick, too. She . . .

At this moment, something occurred to
distract her thoughts. Down on the terrace

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 161

below, little Wilfred, complete with airgun,
had come into her line of vision. The boy
was creeping along in a quiet, purposeful
manner, obviously intent on the chase: and
it suddenly came over Charlotte Mulliner
in a wave that here she had been in this
house all this time and never once had
thought of borrowing the child's weapon
and having a plug at something with it.

The sky was blue. The sun was shining.
All Nature seemed to call to her to come
out and kill things.

She left the room and ran quickly down the
stairs.

And what of Aubrey, meanwhile? Grief
having slowed him up on his feet, he had
been cornered by his mother and marched
off to hand cucumber sandwiches at the
garden-party. After a brief spell of servi-
tude, however, he had contrived to escape
and was wandering on the terrace, musing
mournfully, when he observed his brother
Wilfred approaching. And at the same
moment Charlotte Mulliner emerged from
the house and came hurrying in their
direction. In a flash, Aubrey perceived that
here was a situation which, shrewdly handled,
could be turned greatly to his advantage.
Affecting to be unaware of Charlotte’s

iftz MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

approach, he stopped his brother and eyed
the young thug sternly.

"Wilfred,” he said, "where are you going
with that gun?”

The boy appeared embarrassed.

"Just shooting.”

Aubrey took the weapon from him and
raised his voice slightly. Out of the corner
of his eye he had seen that Charlotte was now
well within hearing.

"Shooting, eh?’’ he said. "Shooting? I
see. And have you never been taught,
wretched child, that you should be kind to
the animals that crave your compassion?
Has no one ever told you that he praycth
best who lovcth best all things both great and
small? For shame, Wilfred, for shame!”

Charlotte had come up, and was standing
there, looking at them inquiringly.

"What's all this about?” she asked.

Aubrey started dramatically.

"Miss Mulliner! I was not aware that you
were there. All this? Oh, nothing. I found
this lad here on his way to shoot sparrows
with his airgun, and I am taking the thing
from him. It may seem to you a high-handed
action on my part. You may consider me
hyper-sensitive. You may ask. Why ail
this fuss about a few birds? But that is
Aubrey Bassinger. Aubrey Bassingcr will

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 163

not lightly allow even the merest sparrow
to be placed in jeopardy. Tut, Wilfred,” he
saitf. “Tut! Cannot you see now how wrong
it is to shoot the poor sparrows? ”

“But I wasn’t going to shoot sparrows,”
said the boy. "I was going to shoot Uncle
Francis while he is having his sun-bath.”

"It is also wrong,” said Aubrey, after a
slight hesitation, “ to shoot Uncle Francis
while he is having his sun-bath.”

Charlotte Mulliner uttered an impatient
exclamation. And Aubrey, looking at her,
saw that her eyes were glittering with a
strange light. She breathed quickly through
her delicately-chiselled nose. She seemed
feverish, and a medical man would have been
concerned about her blood-pressure.

“ Why? ” she demanded vehemently. “ Why
is it wrong? Why shouldn’t he shoot his Uncle
Francis while he is having his sun-bath?”

Aubrey stood for a moment, pondering.
Her razor-like feminine intelligence had cut
cleanly to the core of the matter. Aftqr all,
now that she put it like that, why not?

“Think how it would tickle him up.”

“True,” said Aubrey, nodding. "True.”

“And his uncle Francis is precisely the
sort of man who ought to have been shot at
with air-guns incessantly for the last thirty
years. The moment I met him, I said to

164 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

myself, " That man ought to be shot at with
air-guns.’ ”

Aubrey nodded again. Her girlish en-
thusiasm had begun to infect him.

"There is much in what you say," he
admitted.

"Where is he?” asked Charlotte, turning
to tlfe boy.

"On the roof of the boathouse.”

Charlotte's face clouded.

" H'm !” she said. "That's awkward. How
is one to get at him?”

"I remember Uncle Francis telling me
once,” said Aubrey, " that, when you went
shooting tigers, you climbed a tree. There
are plenty of trees by the boathouse.”

"Admirable!"

For an instant there came to disturb
Aubrey's hearty joy in the chase a brief,
faint flicker of prudence.

"But ... I say . . . Do you really think
. . . Ought we . . . ? ”

Charlotte’s eyes flashed scornfully.

"Infirm of purpose,” she said. "Give me
the air-gun ! ”

"I was only thinking ...”

"Well?”

"I suppose you know he’ll have practi-
cally nothing on?”

Charlotte Mulliner laughed lightly.

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 165

"He can't intimidate me," she said.
"Come! Let us be going."

Up on the roof of the boathouse, the
^hpinpfippnt _■ ultra-violet rays of the after-
noon sun pouring down on his globular sur-
face, Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake lay
in that pleasant half-waking, half-dreaming
state that accompanies this particular form
of lumbago-treatment. His mind flitted
lightly from one soothing subject to another.
He thought of elks he had shot in Canada,
of moufflon he had shot in the Grecian Archi-
pelago, of giraffes he had shot in Nigeria.
He was just on the point of thinking of a
hippopotamus which he had shot in Egypt,
when the train of his meditations was inter-
rupted by a soft popping sound not far
away. He smiled affectionately. So little
Wilfred was out with his air-gun, eh?

A thrill of quiet pride passed through
Colonel Pashley-Drake. He had trained the
lad well, he felt. With a garden-party in
progress, with all the opportunities it offered
for quiet gorging, how many boys of Wilfred’s
age would have neglected their shooting to
hang round the tea-table and stuff themselves
with cakes. But this fine lad . . .

Ping ! There it was again. The boy must
be somewhere quite close at hand. He

166 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING"

wished he could be at his side,' giving him
kindly advice. Wilfred, he felt, was a young
fellow after his own heart. What destruction
he would spread among the really worth-
while animals when he grew up and put aside
childish things and exchanged his air-gun
for a Winchester repeater.

S 3 - Francis Pashley-Drake started. Two
inches from where he lay a splinter of wood
had sprung from the boathouse roof. He
sat up, feeling a little less affectionate.

“Wilfred!”

There was no reply.

"Be careful, Wilfred, my boy. You
nearly . .

A sharp, agonizing twinge caused him to
break off abruptly. He sprang to his feet
and began to address the surrounding land-
scape passionately in one of the lesser-known
dialects of the Congo basin. He no longer
thought of Wilfred with quiet pride. Few
things so speedily modify an uncle’s love as
a nephew’s air-gun bullet in the fleshy part
of the leg. Sir Francis Pashley-Drakc’s plans
for this boy’s future had undergone in one
brief instant a complete change. He no
longer desired to stand beside him through
his formative years, teaching him the secrets
of shikarri. All he wanted to do was to get
close - enoueh to him to teach him with the

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 167

flat of his right hand to be a bit more careful
where he pointed his gun.

He was expressing a synopsis of these views
in a mixture of Urdu and Cape Dutch, when
the words were swept from his lips by the
sight of a woman’s face, peering from the
branches of a near-by tree.

Colonel Pashley-Drake reeled where he
stood. Like so many out-door men, he was
the soul of modesty. Once, in Bechuanaland,
he had left a native witch-dance in a marked
manner because he considered the chief’s
third supplementary wife insufficiently clad.
An acute consciousness of the sketchiness of
his costume overcame him. He blushed
brightly.

"My dear young lady . . he stam-
mered.

VHe had got thus far when he perceived that
the young women was aiming at him some-
thing that looked remarkably like an air-
gun. Her tongue protruding thoughtfully
from the corner of her mouth, and had closed
one eye and with the other was squinting
tensely along the barrel. )

Colonel Sir Francis Paffiley-Drake did not
linger. In all England there was probably no
man more enthusiastic about shooting: but
the fascination of shooting as a sport depends
"almostwholly on whether you are at the right

1 68 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

^ or wrong -^end-of-the. .gun. With an agility
which no gnu, unless in the very pink of con-
dition, could have surpassed, he sprang to
the side of the roof and leaped off. There was
a clump of reeds not far from the boathouse.
He galloped across the turf and dived into
them.

Charlotte descended from her tree. Her
expression was petulant. Girls nowadays are
spoiled, and only too readily become peevish
when baulked of their, pleasures.

“ I had no idea he was so nippy,” she said.

"A quick mover,” agreed Aubrey. “I
imagine he got that way from dodging rhinoc-
eroses.”

"Why can't they make these silly guns
with two barrels? A single barrel doesn’t
give a girl a chance.”

Nestling among the reeds, Colonel Sir
Francis Pashley-Drake, in spite of the indig-
nation natural to a man in his position,
could not help feeling a certain complacency.
The old woodcraft of the hunter had stood
him, he felt, in good stead. Not many men,
he told himself, would have had the initia-
tive and swift intelligence to act so promptly
in the face of peril.

He was aware of voices close by.

“What do we do now? ” he heard Charlotte
Mulliner say.

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 169

"We must think," said the voice of his
nephew Aubrey.

"He’s in there somewhere."

"Yes."

"I hate to see a fine head like that get
away,” said Charlotte, and her voice was
still querulous. "Especially after I winged
him. The very next poem I write is going to
be an appeal to air-gun manufacturers to use
their intelligence, if they have any, and turn
out a line with two barrels.”

" I shall write a Pastel in Prose on the same
subject,” agreed Aubrey.

"Well, what shall we do?”

There was a short silence. An insect of
unknown species crept up Colonel Pashley-
Drake and bit him in the small of the back.

"I’ll tell you what,” said Aubrey. "I
remember uncle Francis mentioning to me
once that when wounded zebus take cover by
the reaches of the Lower Zambesi, the sports-
man despatches a native assistant to set
fire to . . .”

Sir Francis Pashley- Drake emitted a hollow
groan. It was drowned by Charlotte’s cry of
delight.

"Why, of course! How clever you are,
Mr. Bassinger."

"Oh no,” said Aubrey modestly.

"Have you matches?”

170 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

" I have a cigarette-lighter.”

"Then would it be bothering you too much
to go and set light to those reeds — about
there would be a good place — and I’ll wait
here with the gun.”

"I should be charmed.”

"I hate to trouble you.”

"No trouble, I assure you,” said Aubrey.
" A pleasure.”

Three minutes later the revellers on the
lawn were interested^ to observe a sight rare
at the better class of English garden-party.
Out of a clump of laurel-bushes that bordered
the smoothly mown turf there came charging
a stout, pink gentleman of middle age who
hopped from side to side as he ran. He
was wearing a loin-cloth, and seemed in a
hurry. They had just time to recognize in
this newcomer their hostess’s brother, Colonel
Sir Francis Pashley-Drake, when he snatched
a cloth from the nearest table, draped it
round him, and with a quick leap took refuge
behind the portly form of the Bishop of
Stortford, who was talking to the local Master
of Hounds about the difficulty he had in
keeping his vicars off the incense.

Charlotte and Aubrey had paused in the
shelter of the laurels. Aubrey, peering through
this znreba, clicked his tongue regretfully.

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 171

"He's taken cover again," he said. "I’m
afraid we shall find it difficult to dig him out of
there. He’s gone to earth behind a bishop.”

Receiving no reply, he turned.

"Miss Mulliner!" he exclaimed. "Char-
lotte! What is the matter? ”

A strange change had come over the girl’s
beautiful face since he had last gazed at it.
The fire had died out of those lovely eyes, leav-
ing them looking like those of a newly awak-
ened somnambulist. She was pale, and the tip
of her nose quivered.

“Where am I?” she murmured.

"Bludlcigh Manor, Lesser Bludleigh,
Goresby-on-the-Ouse, Bedfordshire. Tele-
phone 28 Goresby,” said Aubrey quickly.

"Have I been dreaming? Or did I really
. . . Ah, yes, yes!" she moaned, shudder-
ing violently. “It all comes back to me.
I shot Sir Francis with the air-gun ! "

"You certainly did,” said Aubrey, and
would have gone on to comment with warm
approbation on the skill she had shown, a
skill which — in an untrained novice — had
struck him as really remarkable. But he
checked himself. " Surely,” he said, "you
are not letting the fact disturb you? It’s the
sort of thing that might have happened to any-
one.”

She interrupted him.

172 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"How right you were, Mr. Bassinger, to
warn me against the spell of Bludleigh. And
how wrong I was to blame you for borrowing
my parasol to chase a rat. Can you ever for-
give me?"

"Charlotte!"

"Aubrey!”

"Charlotte!"

"Ilush!” she said. "Listen.'

On the lawn. Sir Francis Pashley-Drake was
telling his story to. an enthralled audience.
The sympathy of the meeting, it was only too
plain, was entirely with him. This shooting
of a sitting sun-bather had stirred the feelings
of his hearers deeply. Indignant exclama-
tions came faintly to the ears of the young
couple in the laurels.

"Most irregular! "

“Not done!”

" Scarcely cricket ! "

And then, from Sir Alexander Bassinger, a
stern " I shall require a full explanation.”

Charlotte turned to Aubrey.

"What shall we do?”

"Well,” said Aubrey, reflecting, "I don't
think we had better just go and join the party
and behave as if nothing had happened. The
atmosphere doesn't seem right. What I
would propose is that we take a short cut
through the fields to the station, hook up

UNPLEASANTNESS AT BLUDLEIGH 173

with the five-fifty express at Goresby, go to
London, have a bit of dinner, get married
and . .

"Yes, yes," cried Charlotte. “Take me
away from this awful house.”

"To the ends of the world,” said Aubrey
fervently. He paused. " Look here,” he said
suddenly. "If you move over to where I’m
standing, you get the old boy plumb spang
against the sky-line. You wouldn’t care for
just one last ...”

"No, no!”

"Merely a suggestion,” said Aubrey. "Ah
well, perhaps you’re right. Then let’s be
shifting.”

VI

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE

0

I THINK the two young men in the chess-
board knickerbockers were a little sur-
prised when they looked up and perceived
Mr. Mulliner brooding over their table like
an affable Slave of the Lamp. Absorbed
in their conversation, they had not noticed
his approach. It was their first visit to the
Anglers’ Rest, and their first meeting with
the Sage of its bar-parlour: and they were
not yet aware that to Mr. Mulliner any
assemblage of his fellow-men over and above
the number of one constitutes an audience.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” said Mr.
Mulliner. “You have been playing golf, I
sec.”

They said they had.

“You enjoy the game?”

They said they did.

“Perhaps you will allow me to request
Miss Postlethwaite, princess of barmaids,
to re-fill your glasses?”

»74

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 175

They said they would.

"Golf,” said Mr. Mulliner, drawing up a
chair and sinking smoothly into it, "is a
game which I myself have not played for
some years. I was always an indifferent
performer, and I gradually gave it up for
the simpler and more straightforward pastime
of fishing. It is a curious fact that, gifted
though the Mulliners have been in virtually
every branch of life and sport, few of us
have ever taken kindly to golf. Indeed,
the only member of the family I can think
of who attained to any real proficiency with
the clubs was the daughter of a distant
cousin of mine — one of the Devonshire
Mulliners who married a man named Flack.
Agnes was the girl’s name. Perhaps you
have run across her? She is always playing
in tournaments and competitions, I believe.”

The young men said No, they didn’t
seem to know the name.

"Ah?” said Mr. Mulliner. "A pity. It
would have made the story more interesting
to you.”

The two young men exchanged glances.

"Story?” said the one in the slightly
more prismatic knickerbockers, speaking in
a voice that betrayed agitation.

"Story?” said his companion, blenching
a little.

176 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"The story,” said Mr. Mulliner, "of John
Gooch, Frederick Pilcher, Sidney McMurdo
and Agnes Flack.”

The first young man said he didn’t know
it was so late. The second young man said
it was extraordinary how time went. They
began to talk confusedly about trains.

"The story," repeated Mr. Mulliner,
holding them with the effortless ease which
makes this sort of thing such child’s play to
him, “of Agnes Flack, Sidney McMurdo,
Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch.”

It is an odd thing (said Mr. Mulliner)
how often one finds that those who practise
the Arts are quiet, timid little men, shy in
company and unable to express themselves
except through the medium of the pencil
or the pen. I have noticed it again and
again. John Gooch was like that. So was
Frederick Pilcher. Gooch was a writer and
Pilcher was an artist, and they used to meet
a good deal at Agnes Flack's house, where
they were constant callers. And every time
they met John Gooch would say to himself
as he watched Pilcher balancing a cup of
tea and smiling his weak, propitiatory smile,
"I am fond of Frederick, but his best friend
could not deny that he is a pretty dumb
brick.” And Pilcher, as he saw Gooch

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 177

sitting on the edge of his chair and finger-
ing his tie, would reflect, "Nice fellow as
John is, he is certainly a total loss in mixed
society."

Mark you, if ever men had an excuse for
being ill at ease in the presence of the opposite
sex, these two had. They were both eighteen-
handicap men, and Agnes was exuberantly
and dynamically scratch. Her physique
was an asset to her, especially at the long
game. She stood about five feet ten in her
stockings, and had shoulders and forearms
which would have excited the envious admir-
ation of one of those muscular women on
the music-halls, who good-naturedly allow
six brothers, three sisters, and a cousin by
marriage to pile themselves on her collar-
bone while the orchestra plays a long-drawn
chord and the audience hurries out to the
bar. He*' eye resembled the eye of one of
the more imperious queens of history: and
when she laughed, strong men clutched at
their temples to keep the tops of their heads
from breaking loose.

Even Sidney McMurdo was as a piece of
damp blotting-paper in her presence. And
he was a man who weighed two hundred
and eleven pounds and had once been a
semi-finalist in the Amateur Championship.
He loved Agnes Flack with an ox-like

178 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

devotion. And yet — and this will show
you what life is — when she laughed, it was
nearly always at him. I am told by those
in a position to know that, on the occasion
when he first proposed to her — on the sixth
green — distant rumblings of her mirth were
plainly heard in the club-house locker-room,
causing two men who were afraid of thunder-
storms to scratch their match.

Such, then, was Agnes Flack. Such,
also, was Sidney McMurdo. And such were
Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch.

Now John Gooch, though, of course, they
had exchanged a word from time to time,
was in no sense an intimate of Sidney
McMurdo. It was consequently a surprise
to him when one night, as he sat polishing
up the rough draft of a detective story — for
his was the talent that found expression largely
in blood, shots in the night, and millionaires
who are found murdered in locked rooms
with no possible means of access except
a window forty feet above the ground —
the vast bulk of McMurdo lumbered across
his threshold and deposited itself in a
chair.

The chair creaked. Gooch stared. McMurdo
groaned.

"Are you ill?” said John Gooch.

''Ha!” said Sidney McMurdo.

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 179

He had been sitting with his face buried
in his hands, but now he looked up; and
there was a red glare in his eyes which sent a
thrill of horror through John Gooch. The
visitor reminded him of the Human Gorilla
in his novel, The Mystery of the Severed Ear.

“For two pins," said Sidney McMurdo,
displaying a more mercenary spirit than the
Human Gorilla, who had required no cash
payment for his crimes, "I would tear you
into shreds.”

“Me?” said John Gooch, blankly.

“Yes, you. And that fellow Pilcher, too.”
He rose; and, striding to the mantelpiece,
broke off a corner of it and crumbled
it in his fingers. “You have stolen her
from me.”

“Stolen? Whom?”

“My Agnes.”

John Gooch stared at him, thoroughly
bewildered. The idea of stealing Agnes
Flack was rather like the notion of sneaking
off with the Albert Hall. He could make
nothing of it.

“She is going to marry you.”

“What!” cried John Gooch, aghast.

" Either you or Pilcher.” McMurdo paused.
“Shall I tear you into little strips and
tread you into the carpet?” he murmured,
meditatively.

180 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"No,” said John Gooch. His mind was
blurred, but he was clear on that point.

"Why did you come butting in?” groaned
Sidney McMurdo, absently taking up the
poker and tying it into a lover's knot. "I
was getting along splendidly until you two
pimples broke out. Slowly but surely
I was teaching her to love me, and now it
can never be. I have a message for you.
From her. I proposed to her for the eleventh
time to-night; and when she had finished
laughing she told me that she could never
marry a mere mass of brawn. She said
she wanted brain. And she told me to
tell you and the pest Pilcher that she had
watched you closely and realized that you
both loved her, but were too shy to speak,
and that she understood and would marry
one of you.”

There was a long silence.

"Pilcher is a splendid fellow,” said John
Gooch. "She must marry Pilcher.”

"She will, if he wins the match.”

"What match?”

"The golf match. She read a story in a
magazine the other day where two men played
a match at golf to decide which was to win
the heroine ; and about a week later she read
another story in another magazine where two

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 181

men played a match at golf to decide which
was to win the heroine. And a couple of days
ago she read three more stories in three more
magazines where exactly the same thing hap-
pened; and she ha^' decided to accept it as
an omen. So yotr'and the hound Pilcher are
to play eightgjsn holes, and the winner marries
Agnes^'-'''"

/^fhe winner?”

"Certainly.”

“I should have thought — I forget what I
was going to say.”

McMurdo eyed him keenly.

"Gooch,” he said, "You are not one of
those thoughtless butterflies, I hope, who go
about breaking girls’ hearts?”
j "No, no,” said John Gooch, learning for
tne first time that this was what butterflies
did.}

"You are not one of those men who win a
good girl's love and then ride away with a
light laugh? ”

John Gooch said he certainly was net. He
would not dream of laughing, even lightly, at
any girl. Besides, he added, he could not
ride. He had once had three lessons in the
Park, but had not seemed to be able to get
the knack.

"So much the better for you,” said Sidney
McMurdo heavily. "Because, if I thought

182 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

that, I should know what steps to take. Even
now. ...” He paused, and looked at the
poker in a rather yearning sort of way. “No,
no,” he said, with a sigh, “better not, better
not.” He flung the thing down with a gesture
of resignation. “ Better, perhaps, on the whole
not.” He rose, frowning. " Well, good night,
weed#” he said. “The match will be played
on Friday morning. And may the better —
or, rather, the less impossibly foul — man win.”

He banged the door, and John Gooch was
alone.

But not for long. Scarcely half an hour
had passed when the door opened once more
to admit Frederick Pilcher. The artist’s face
was pale, and he was breathing heavily. He
sat down, and after a brief interval contrived
to summon up a smile. He rose and patted
John Gooch on the shoulder.

“John,” he said, "I am a man who as a
general rule hides his feelings. I mask my
affections. But I want to say, straight out,
here and now, that I like you, John.”

“Yes?” said John Gooch.

Frederick Pilcher patted his other shoulder.

I like you so much, John, old man, that
1 can read your thoughts, strive to conceal
them though you may. I have been watching
you closely of late, John, and I know your
secret. You love Agnes Flack."

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 183
"I don’t!''

"Yes, you do. Ah, John, John," said
Frederick Pilcher, with a gentle smile, "why
try to deceive an old friend? You love her,
John. You love that girl. And I have good
news for you, John — tidings of great joy.
I happen to know that she will look favour-
ably on your suit. Go in and win, my boy,
go in and win. Take my advice and dash
round and propose without a moment’s delay.”

John Gooch shook his head. He, too
smiled a gentle smile.

"Frederick,” he said, "this is like you.
Noble. That’s what I call it. Noble. -It’s
the sort of thing the hero does in act two.
But it must not be, Frederick. It must not,
shall not be. I also can read a friend’s heart,
and I know that you, too, love Agnes Flack.
And I yield my claim. I am excessively
fond of you, Frederick, and I give her up to
you. God bless you, old fellow. God, in
fact, bless both of you."

"Look here,” said Frederick Pilcher, "have
you been having a visit from Sidney Mc-
Murdo? ”

“He did drop in for a minute.”

There was a tense pause.

"What I can't understand,” said Frederick
Pilcher, at length, peevishly, "is why, if
you don’t love this infernal girl, you kept

184 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

calling at her house practically every night
and sitting goggling at her with obvious
devotion."

"It wasn't devotion."

"It looked like it."

"Well, it wasn’t. And, if it comes to
that, why did you call on her practically
every night and goggle just as much as I
did? 1 *

"I had a very good reason,” said Frederick
Pilcher "I was studying her face. I am
planning a series of humorous drawings on
the lines of Felix- the Cat, and I wanted her
as a model. To goggle at a girl in the
interests of one's Art, as I did, is a very
different thing from goggling wantonly at
her, like you.”

"Is that so?" said John Gooch. “Well,
let me tell you that I wasn’t goggling wan-
tonly. I was studying her psychology for a
series of stories which I am preparing, entitled
Madeline Monk, Murderess.”

Frederick Pilcher held out his hand.

"I wronged you, John,” he said. "How-
ever, be that as it may, the point is that we
both appear to be up against it very hard.
An extraordinarily well-developed man, that
fellow McMurdo.”

"A mass of muscle."

"And of a violent disposition.”

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 185

"Dangerously so."

Frederick Pilcher drew out his handkerchief
and dabbed at his forehead.

"You don’t think, John, that you might
ultimately come to love Agnes Flack? ”

"I do not.”

"Love frequently comes after marriage, I
believe.”

"So does suicide.”

"Then it looks to me,” said Frederick
Pilcher, "as if one of us was for it. I see no
way out of playing that match.”

"Nor I.”

"The growing tendency on the part of the
modern girl to read trashy magazine stories,”
said Frederick Pilcher severely, "is one that
I deplore. I view it with alarm. And I
wish to goodness that you authors wouldn't
write tales about men who play golf matches
for the hand of a woman.”

"Authors must live,” said John Gooch.
"How is your game these days, Frederick?”

"Improved, unfortunately. I am putting
better.”

"I am steadier off the tee.” John Gooch
laughed bitterly. “When I think of the
hours of practice I have put in, little knowing
that a thing of this sort was in store for me,
I appreciate the irony of life. If I had not
bought Sandy McHoots' book last spring I

1 86 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

might now be in a position to be beaten five
and four.”

"Instead of which, you will probably win
the match on the twelfth.”

John Gooch started.

"You can't be as bad as that!”

"I shall be on Friday.”

""Vou mean to say you aren't going to
try?”

"I do.”

"You have sunk to such depths that you
would deliberately play below your proper
form? ”

"I have.”

"Pilcher,” said John Gooch, coldly, "you
are a hound, and I never liked you from the
start.”

You would have thought that, after the
conversation which I have just related, no
depth of low cunning on the part of Frederick
Pilcher would have had the power to surprise
John Gooch. And yet, as he saw the other
come out of the club-house to join him on
the first tee on the Friday morning, I am not
exaggerating when I say that he was stunned.

John Gooch had arrived at the links early,
wishing to get in a little practice. One of
his outstanding defects as a golfer was a pro-
nounced slice; and it seemed to him that, if

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 187

he drove off a few balls before the match
began, he might be able to analyse this slice
and see just what was the best stance to
take up in order that it might have full scope.
He was teeing his third ball when Frederick
Pilcher appeared*

"What — what — what 1” gasped John

Gooch.

For Frederick Pilcher, discarding the baggy,
mustard-coloured plus-fours in which it was
his usual custom to infest the links, was
dressed in a perfectly-fitting morning-coat,
yellow waistcoat, striped trousers, spats, and
patent-leather shoes. He wore a high stiff
collar, and on his head was the glossiest top-
hat ever seen off the Stock Exchange. He
looked intensely uncomfortable ; and yet
there was on his face a smirk which he made
no attempt to conceal.

"What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Why are you dressed like that?” John
Gooch uttered an exclamation. "I see it
all. You think it will put you off your
game.”

"Some idea of the kind did occur to me,”
replied Frederick Pilcher, airily.

"You fiend!”

"Tut, tut, John. These are hard words to
use to a friend.”

“You are no friend of mine.”

1 88

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“A pity," said Frederick Pilcher, "for I
was hoping that you would ask me to be your
best man at the wedding.” He took a club
from his bag and swung it. "Amazing what
a difference clothes make. You would hardly
believe how this coat cramps the shoulders.
I feel as if I were a sardine trying to wriggle
in its* tin.”

The world seemed to swim before John
Gooch's eyes. Then the mist cleared, and he
fixed Frederick Pilcher with a hypnotic gaze.

“You are going to play well,” he said,
speaking very slowly and distinctly. "You
are going to play well. You are going to
play well. You ”

"Stop it!” cried Frederick Pilcher.

"You are going to play well. You are
going ”

A heavy hand descended on his shoulder.
Sidney McMurdo was regarding him with a
black scowl.

"We don't want any of your confounded
chivalry,” said Sidney McMurdo. "This
match is going to be played in the strictest

spirit of What the devil are you dressed

like that for?" he demanded, wheeling on
Frederick Pilcher.

"I — I have to go into the City immedi-
ately after the match,” said Pilcher. "I
sha'n't have time to change.”

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 189

"H’m. Well, it’s your own affair. Come
along,” said Sidney McMurdo, gritting his
teeth. ‘'I’ve been told to referee this match,
and I don’t want to stay here all day. Toss
for the honour, worms.”

John Gooch spun a coin. Frederick Pilcher
called tails. The coin fell heads up.

“Drive off, reptile,” said Sidney McMurdo.

As John Gooch addressed his ball, he was
aware of a strange sensation which he could
not immediately analyse. It was only when,
after waggling two or three times, he started
to draw his club back that it flashed upon
him that this strange sensation was confidence.
For the first time in his life he seemed to
have no doubt that the ball, well and truly
struck, would travel sweetly down the middle
of the fairway. And then the hideous truth
dawned on him. His subconscious self had
totally misunderstood the purport of his
recent remarks and had got the whole things
nicely muddled up.

Much has been written of the subconscious
self, and all that has been written goes to
show that of all the thick-headed, blundering
chumps who take everything they hear liter-
ally, it is the worst. Anybody of any
intelligence would have realized that when
John Gooch said, “You are going to play
well,” he was speaking to Frederick Pilcher;

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

190

but his subconscious self had missed the point
completely. It had heard John Gooch say,
"You are going to play well,” and it was
seeing that he did so.

The unfortunate man did what he could.
Realizing what had happened, he tried with
a despairing jerk to throw his swing out of
gea* just as the club came above his shoulder.
It was a fatal move. You may recall that
when Arnaud Massy won the British Open
Championship one cf. the features of his play
was a sort of wiggly twiggle at the top of the
swing, which seemed to have the effect of
adding yards to his drive. This wiggly
twiggle John Gooch, in his effort to wreck
his shot, achieved to a nicety. The ball
soared over the bunker in which he had
hoped to waste at least three strokes; and
fell so near the green that it was plain that
only a miracle could save him from getting
a four.

There was a sardonic smile on Frederick
Pilcher's face as he stepped on to the tee. In
a few moments he would be one down, and it
would not be his fault if he failed to maintain
the advantage. He drew back the head
of his club. His coat, cut by a fashion-
able tailor who, like all fashionable tailors,
resented it if the clothes he made permitted
his customers to breathe, w r as so tight that

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 19 1

he could not get the club-head more than
half-way up. He brought it to this point,
then brought it down in a lifeless semi-
circle.

“Nice!” said Sidney McMurdo, involun-
tarily. He despised and disliked Frederick
Pilcher, but he was a golfer. And a golfer
cannot refrain from giving a good shot its
meed of praise.

For the ball, instead of trickling down the
hill as Frederick Pilcher had expected, was
singing through the air like a shell. It fell
near John Gooch’s ball and, bounding past it,
ran on to the green.

The explanation was, of course, simple.
Frederick Pilcher was a man who, in his
normal golfing costume, habitually over-
swung. This fault the tightness of his coat
had now rendered impossible. And his other
pet failing, the raising of the head, had been
checked by the fact that he was wearing a
top-hat. It had been Pilcher’s intention to
jerk his head till his spine cracked; but the
unseen influence of generations of ancestors
who had devoted the whole of their intellect
to the balancing of top-liats on windy days
was too much for him.

A minute later the two men had halved the
hole in four.

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

192

The next hole, the water-hole, they halved
in three. The third, long and over the hill,
they halved in five.

And it was as they moved to the fourth
tee that a sort of madness came upon both
Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch simul-
taneously.

l hese two, you must remember, were
eighteen-handicap men. That is to say, they
thought well of themselves if they could get
sixes on the first, sevens on the third, and
anything from fours to elevens on the second
— according to the number of balls they sank
in the water. And they had done these
three holes in twelve. John Gooch looked at
Frederick Pilcher and Frederick Pilcher looked
at John Gooch. Their eyes were gleaming,
and they breathed a little stertorously
through their noses.

"Pretty work,” said John Gooch.

"Nice stuff,” said Frederick Pilcher.

"Get a move on, blisters,” growled Sidney
McMurdo.

It was at this point that the madness came
upon these two men.

Picture to yourself their position. Each
felt that by continuing to play in this form
he was running a deadly risk of having to

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 193

marry Agnes Flack. Each felt that his
opponent could not possibly keep up so hot
a pace much longer, and the prudent course,
therefore, was for himself to ease off a bit
before the crash came. And each, though
fully aware of all this, felt that he was dashed
if he wasn’t going to have a stab at doing the
round of his life. It might well be that,
having started off at such a clip, he would
find himself finishing somewhere in the
eighties. And that, surely, would compen-
sate for everything.

After all, felt John Gooch, suppose he did
marry Agnes Flack, what of it? He had
faith in his star, and it seemed to him that
she might quite easily get run over by a
truck or fall off a cliff during the honey-
moon. Besides, with all the facilities for
divorce which modern civilization so bene-
ficently provides, what was there to be
afraid of in marriage, even with an Agnes
Flack?

Frederick Pilcher’s thoughts were equally
optimistic. Agnes Flack, he reflected, was
undeniably a pot of poison; but so much
the better. Just the wife to keep an artist
up to the mark. Hitherto he had had a
tendency to be a little lazy. He had avoided
his studio and loafed about the house.
Married to Agnes Flack, his studio would

194 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

see a lot more of him. He would spend all
day in it — probably have a truckle bed put
in and never leave it at all. A sensible man,
felt Frederick Pilcher, can always make a
success of marriage if he goes about it
in the right spirit.

John Gooch’s eyes gleamed. Frederick
Pilcher’s jaw protruded. And neck and
neck, fighting grimly for their sixes and
sometimes even achieving fives, they came
to the ninth greer, halved the hole, and
were all square at the turn.

It was at this point that they perceived
Agnes Flack standing on the club-house
terrace.

"Yoo-hoo!” cried Agnes in a voice of
thunder.

And John Gooch and Frederick Pilcher
stopped dead in their tracks, blinking like
abruptly-awakened somnambulists.

She made a singularly impressive picture,
standing there with her tweed-clad form
outlined against the white of the club-house
wall. She had the appearance of one who
is about to play Boadicea in a pageant ; and
John Gooch, as he gazed at her, was conscious
of a chill that ran right down his back and
oozed out at the soles of his feet.

"How’s the match coming along?” she
yelled, cheerily.

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 195

'All square," replied Sidney McMurdo,
with a sullen scowl. "Wait where you are
for a minute, germs,” he said. "I wish to
have a word with Miss Flack.”

He drew Agnes aside and began to speak
to her in a low rumbling voice. And pres-
ently it was made apparent to all within a
radius of half a mile that he had been pro-
posing to her once again, for suddenly she
threw her head back and there went re-
verberating over the countryside that old
familiar laugh.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, HA!” laughed
Agnes Flack.

John Gooch shot a glance at his opponent.
The artist, pale to the lips, was removing his
coat and hat and handing them to his caddie.
And, even as John Gooch looked, he un-
fastened his braces and tied them round his
waist. It was plain that from now on
Frederick Pilcher intended to run no risk of
not overswinging.

John Gooch could appreciate his feelings.
The thought of how that laugh would sound
across the bacon and eggs on a rainy Monday
morning turned the marrow in his spine to
ice and curdled every red corpuscle in his
veins. Gone was the exhilarating ferment
which had caused him to skip like a young
ram when a long putt had given him a forty-

196 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

six for the first nine. How bitterly he re-
gretted now those raking drives, those crisp
flicks of the mashie-niblick of which he had
been so proud ten minutes ago. If only he
had not played such an infernally good game
going out, he reflected, he might at this
moment be eight or nine down and without a
care fijtthe world.

A shadow fell between him and the sun;
and he turned to see Sidney McMurdo stand-
ing by his side, glaring with a singular
intensity.

“Bah!” said Sidney McMurdo, having
regarded him in silence for some moments.

He turned on his heel and made for the
club-house.

“Where are you going, Sidney?” asked
Agnes Flack.

“I am going home,” replied Sidney Mc-
Murdo, “before I murder these two miserable
harvest-bugs. I am only flesh and blood,
and the temptation to grind them into powder
and scatter them to the four winds will shortly
become too strong. Good morning.”

Agnes emitted another laugh like a steam-
riveter at work.

" Isn't he funny? ” she said, addressing John
Gooch, who had clutched at his scalp and was
holding it down as the vibrations died away.
“Well, I suppose I shall have to referee the

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 197

rest of the match myself. Whose honour?
Yours? Then drive off and let’s get at it."

The demoralizing effects of his form on
the first nine holes had not completely left
John Gooch. He drove long and straight,
and stepped back appalled. Only a similar
blunder on the part of his opponent could
undo the damage.

But Frederick Pilcher had his wits well
about him. He overswung as he had never
overswung before. His ball shot off into the
the long grass on the right of the course, and
he uttered a pleased cry

"Lost ball, I fancy,” lie said. "Too bad!"

"I marked it,” said John Gooch, grimly.
*' I will come and help you find it."

"Don't trouble.”

" It is no trouble.”

"But it’s your hole, anyway. It will take
me three or four to get out of there.”

" It will take me four or five to get a yard
from where I am.”

"Gooch,” said Frederick Pilcher, in a
cautious whisper, "you are a cad.”

"Pilcher,” said John Gooch, in tones
equally hushed, ‘ ' you are a low bounder. And
if I find you kicking that ball under a bush,
there will be blood shed — and in large quan-
tities.”

198 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

" Ha, ha!”

"Ha, ha to you!” said John Gooch.

The ball was lying in a leathery tuft, and,
as Pilcher had predicted, it took three strokes
to move it back to the fairway. By the time
Frederick Pilcher had reached the spot where
John Gooch’s drive had finished, he had
playecWseven.

But there was good stuff in John Gooch.

It is often in times of great peril that the
artistic temperament shows up best. Missing
the ball altogether with his next three swings,
he topped it with his fourth,- topped it again
with his fifth, '' \ lading u>e like, su;: f a
low, skimmin t shot well over the green into
the bunker beyond. Frederick Pilcher, aim-
ing for the san e bunker, sliced and landed on .i
the green. T te six strokes which it took
John Gooch to get out of the sand decided the r
issue. Frederick Pilcher was one up at th"
tenth.

But John Gooch’s advantage was short-
lived. On the right, as you approach the
eleventh green there is a deep chasm, spanned
by a wooden bridge. Frederick Pilcher, play-
ing twelve, just failed to put his ball into this,
and it rolled on to within a few feet of the
hole. It seemed to John Gooch that the day
was his. An easy mashie-shot would take him

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 199
well into the chasm, from which no eighteen-
handicap player had ever emerged within the
memory of man. This would put him two
down — a winning lead. He swung jubi-
lantly, and brought off a nicely-lofted shot
which seemed to be making for the very
centre of the pit.

And so, indeed, it was ; and it was this fact
that undid John Gooch’s schemes. The ball,
with all the rest of the chasm to choose from,
capriciously decided to strike the one spot on
the left-hand rail of the wooden bridge which
would deflect it towards the flag. It bounded
high • 'the omtiieq-, 0 "' v and the next

moment, while John Gooch s'tcgd watching
with fallen jaw and starting eyes, ij; had trickled
nto the hole. ar

There was a throbbing silence. I' Then Agnes
Flack spoke. *

. " Important, if true,” she said, t " All square
again. I will say one thing for you two — you
make this game very interesting.”

And once more she sent the birds shooting
out of the tree-tops with that hearty laugh
of hers. John Gooui, coming slowly to after
the shattering impact of it, found that he was
clutching Frederick Pilcher’s arm. He flung
it from him as if it had been a loathsome snake.

A grimmer struggle than that which took
place over the next six holes has probably

200 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

never been seen on any links. First one,
then the other seemed to be about to lose the
hole, but always a well-judged slice or a
timely top enabled his opponent to rally. At
the eighteenth tee the game was still square ;
and John Gooch, taking advantage of the fact
that Agnes had stopped to tie her shoe-lace
endeavoured to appeal to his one-time friend's
better nature.

"Frederick,” he said, "this is not like
you.”

"What isn’t like me?”

"Playing this low-down game. It is not
like the old Frederick Pilcher.”

"Well, what sort of a game do you think
you are playing? ”

"A little below my usual, it is true,”
admitted John Gooch. "But that is due to
nervousness. You are deliberately trying to
foozle, which is not only painting the lily but
very dishonest. And I can't see what motive
you have, either.”

"You can’t, can't you?”

John Gooch laid a hand persuasively on
the other's shoulder.

"Agnes Flack is a most delightful girl."

"Who is?”

"Agnes Flack.”

"A delightful girl? "

"Most delightful.”

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 201

"Agnes Flack is a delightful girl? ”

"Yes.”

"Oh?”

"She would make you very happy.”

“Who would?”

"Agnes Flack.”

" Make me happy? ”

"Very happy.”

"Agnes Flack would make me happy?”

"Yes.”

"Oh?”

John Gooch was conscious of a slight dis-
couragement He did not seem to be making
headway.

"Well, then, look here,” he said, "what
we had better do is to have a gentleman’s
agreement.”

"Who are the gentlemen?”

"You and I.”

"Oh?”

John Gooch did not like the other’s man-
ner, nor did he like the tone of voice in which
he had spoken. But then there were so many
things about Frederick Pilcher that he did not
like that it seemed useless to try to do any-
thing about it. Moreover, Agnes Flack had
finished tying her shoe-lace, and was making
for them across the turf like a mastodon
striding over some prehistoric plain. It was
no time for wasting words.

202

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“A gentleman’s agreement to halve the
match,” he said hurriedly.

"What's the good of that? She would
only make us play extra holes.”

"We would halve those, too.”

"Then we should have to play it off another
day.”

"But before that we could leave the neigh-
bourhood.”

"Sidney McMurdo would follow us to the
ends of the earth.”

"Ah, but suppose we didn't go there?
Suppose we simply lay low in the city and
grew beards?”

"There’s something in it,” said Frederick
Pilcher, reflectively.

“You agree? ”

"Very well.”

"Splendid!”

"What’s splendid?” asked Agnes Flack,
thudding up.

“Oh — er — the match,” said John Gooch.
"I was saying to Pilcher that this was a
splendid match.”

Agnes Flack sniffed. She seemed quieter
than she had been at the outset, as though
something were on her mind.

"I’m glad you think so,” she said. "Do
you two always play like this? ”

"Oh, yes. Yes. This is about our usual form.”

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 203

"H’m! Well, push on.”

It was with a light heart that John Gooch
addressed ‘his ball for the last drive of the
match. A great weight had been lifted from
his mind, and he told himself that now there
was no objection to bringing off a real sweet
one. He swung lustily; and the ball, struck
on its extreme left side, shot off at right angles,
Lit the ladies' tee-box, and, whizzing back at
a high rate of speed, would have mown Agnes
Flack’s ankles from under her, had she not at
the psychological moment skipped in a manner
extraordinarily reminiscent of the high hills
mentioned in Sacred Writ.

“Sorry, old man,” said John Gooch, hastily,
flushing as he encountered Frederick Pilcher's
cold look of suspicion. “Frightfully sorry,
Frederick, old man. Absolutely uninten-
tional.”

"What are you apologizing to him for? ” de-
manded Agnes Flack with a good deal of heat.
It had been a near thing, and the girl was
ruffled.

Frederick Pilcher’s suspicions had plainly
not been allayed by John Gooch's words. He
drove a cautious thirty yards, and waited with
the air of one suspending judgment for his oppo-
nent to play his second. It was with a feeling
of relief that John Gooch, smiting vigorously
with his brassie, was enabled to establish

204 MR. MULL1NER SPEAKING

his bona fides with a shot that rolled to with-
in mashie-niblick distance of the green.

Frederick Pilcher seemed satisfied that all
was well. He played his second to the edge
of the green. John Gooch ran his third up
into the neighbourhood of the pin.

Frederick Pilcher 1 stooped and picked his
ball^jip.

"Here!'' cried Agnes Flack.

“Hey!'' ejaculated John Gooch.

"What on earth do you think you’re do-
ing?” said Agnes Flack.

Frederick Pilcher looked at them with mild
surprise.

"What’s the matter?” he said. “There’s
a blob of mud on my ball. I just wanted to
brush it off.”

" Oh, my heavens ! ” thundered Agnes Flack.
"Haven’t you ever read the rules? You’re
disqualified.”

"Disqualified? ”

"Dis-jolly-well-qualified,” said Agnes Flack,
her eyes flashing scorn. "This cripple here
wins the match.”

Frederick Pilcher heaved a sigh.

" So be it,” he said. "So be it.”

"What do you mean, so be it? Of course
it is.”

"Exactly. Exactly. I quite understand.
I have lost the match. So be it.”

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 205

And, with drooping' shoulders, Frederick
Pilcher shuffled off in the direction of the
bar.

John Gooch watched him go with a seeth-
ing fury which for the moment robbed him of
speech. He might, he told himself, have ex-
pected something like this. Frederick Pilcher,
lost to every sense of good feeling and fair
play, had double-crossed him. He shuddered
as he realized how inky must be the hue of
Frederick Pilcher’s soul; and he wished in a
frenzy of regret that he had thought of picking
his own ball up. Too late ! Too late !

For an instant the world had been blotted
out for John Gooch by a sort of red mist.
This mist clearing, he now saw Agnes Flack
standing looking at him in a speculative sort
of way, an odd expression in her eyes. And
beyond her, leaning darkly against the club-
house wall, his bulging muscles swelling be-
neath his coat and his powerful fingers tearing
to pieces what appeared to be a section of lead
piping, stood Sidney McMurdo.

John Gooch did not hesitate. Although
McMurdo was some distance away, he could
see him quite clearly; and with equal clear-
ness he could remember every detail of that
recent interview with him. He drew a step
nearer to Agnes Flack, and having gulped
once or twice, began to speak.

206

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Agnes," he said huskily,, "there is some-
thing I want to say to you. Oh, Agnes, have
you not guessed "

"One moment," said Agnes Flack. If
you’re trying to propose to me, sign off.
There is nothing doing. The idea is all wet.”

"All wet?”

"^11 absolutely wet. I admit that there
was a time when I toyed with the idea of
marrying a man with brains, but there are
limits. I wouldn’t marry a man who played
golf as badly as you do if he were the last man
in the world. Sid-nee!” she roared, turning
and cupping her mouth with her hands ; and
a nervous golfer down by the lake-hole leaped
three feet and got his mashie entangled be-
tween his legs.

"Hullo?”

"I'm going to marry you, after all.”

"Me?”

"Yes, you.”

"Three rousing cheers!” bellowed Mc-
Murdo.

Agnes Flack turned to John Gooch. There
was something like commiseration in her eyes,
for she was a woman. Rather on the large
side, but still a woman.

"I’m sorry,” she said.

"Don't mention it,” said John Gooch.

‘I hope this won’t ruin your life.”

THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE 207
"No, no."

"You still have your Art."

"Yes, I still have my Art."

"Are you working on anything just now? "
asked Agnes Flack.

"I'm starting a new story to-night," said
John Gooch. "It will be called Saved From
the Scaffold ."

VII

* SOMETHING SQUISHY

T HERE had been a gap for a week or
so in our littl° circle at the Anglers'
Rest, and that gap the most serious that
could have occurred. Mr. Mulliner’s had been
the vacant chair, and we had felt his absence
acutely. Inquiry on his welcome return
elicited the fact that he had been down in
Hertfordshire, paying a visit to his cousin
Lady Wickham, at her historic residence,
Skeldings Hall. He had left her well, he
informed us, but somewhat worried.

“About her daughter Roberta,” said Mr.
Mulliner.

"Delicate girl?” we asked sympatheti-
cally.

“Not at all. Physically, most robust.
What is troubling my cousin is the fact that
she does not get married."

A tactless Mild-and-Bitter, who was a new-
comer to the bar-parlour and so should not
have spoken at all, said that that was often

208

SOMETHING SQUISHY 209

the way with these plain girls. The modern
young man, he said, valued mere looks too
highly, and instead of being patient, and
carrying on pluckily till he was able to pene-
trate the unsightly exterior to the good
womanly heart within . . .

"My cousin’s daughter Roberta,” said Mir.
Mulliner with some asperity, "is not plain.
Like all the Mul liners on the female side, how-
ever distantly removed from the main branch,
she is remarkably beautiful. And yet she
does not get married."

"A mystery,” we mused.

"One,” said Mr. Mulliner, "that I have
been able to solve. I was privileged to enjoy
a good deal of Roberta’s confidence during
my visit, and I also met a young man named
Algernon Crufts who appears to enjoy still
more and also to be friendly with some of
those of the male sex in whose society she has
been moving lately. I am afraid that, like so
many spirited girls of to-day, she is inclined
to treat her suitors badly. They get dis-
couraged, and I think with some excuse.
There was young Attwater, for instance . . .”

Mr. Mulliner broke off and sipped his hot
Scotch and lemon. He appeared to have
fallen into a reverie. From time to time, as
he paused in his sipping, a chuckle escaped
him.

210

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

" Attwater? ” we said.

"Yes, that was the name."

" What happened to him? "

"Oh, you wish to hear the story? Cer-
tainly, certainly, by all means.”

He rapped gently on the table, eyed his
re-charged glass with quiet satisfaction, and
proceeded.

In the demeanour of Roland Moresby
Attwater, that rising young essayist and
literary critic, there appeared (said Mr.
Mulliner) as he stood holding the door open
to allow the ladies to leave his uncle Joseph's
dining-room, no outward and visible sign of
the irritation that seethed beneath his mud-
stained shirt-front. Well-bred and highly
civilized, he knew how to wear the mask.
The lofty forehead that shone above his rim-
less pince-nez was smooth and unruffled, and
if he bared his teeth it was only in a polite
smile. Nevertheless, Roland Attwater was
fed to the eyebrows.

In the first place, he hated these family
dinners. In the second place, he had been
longing all the evening for a chance to explain
that muddy shirt, and everybody had treated
it with a silent tact which was simply madden-
ing. In the third place, he knew that his
uncle Joseph was only waiting for the women

SOMETHING SQUISHY zn

to go to bring up once again the infuriating
topic of Lucy.

After a preliminary fluttering, not unlike
that of hens disturbed in a barnyard, the
female members of the party rustled past him
in single file — his aunt Emily ; his aunt Emily's
friend, Mrs. Hughes Higham ; his aunt Emily’s
companion and secretary, Miss Partlett; and
his aunt Emily's adopted daughter, Lucy.
The last-named brought up the rear of the
procession. She was a gentle-looking girl
with spaniel eyes and freckles, and as she
passed she gave Roland a swift, shy glance of
admiration and gratitude. It was the sort
of look Ariadne might have given Theseus
immediately after his turn-up with the Mino-
taur: and a casual observer, not knowing the
facts, would have supposed that, instead of
merely opening a door for her, Roland had
rescued her at considerable bodily risk from
some frightful doom.

Roland closed the door and returned to the
table. His uncle, having pushed port to-
wards him, coughed significantly and opened
fire.

“ How did you think Lucy was looking to-
night, Roland?”

The young man winced, but the fine courtly
spirit which is such a characteristic of the
younger members of the intelligentsia did not

212

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

fail him. Instead of banging the speaker over
the head with the decanter, he replied with
quiet civility:

"Splendid.'’

"Nice girl.”

"Very.”

"Wonderful disposition.”

"Quite.”

"And so sensible.”

"Precisely.”

"Very different frcm these shingled, cigar-
ette-smoking young women who infest the
place nowadays.”

"Decidedly.”

"Had one of ’em up before me this morn-
ing,” said Uncle Joseph, frowning austerely
over his port. Sir Joseph Moresby was
by profession a metropolitan magistrate.
"Charged with speeding. That’s their idea
of life.”

"Girls,” argued Roland, "will be girls.”

"Not while I’m sitting at Bosher Street
police-court, they won’t,” said his uncle,
with decision. “Unless they want to pay
five-pound fines and have their licences
endorsed.” He sipped thoughtfully. “Look
here, Roland,” he said, as one struck by a
novel idea, "why the devil don't you marry
Lucy?”

"Well, uncle ”

SOMETHING SQUISHY 213

"You’ve got a bit of money, she’s got a
bit of money. Ideal. Besides, you want
somebody to look after you.”

"Do you suggest,” inquired Roland, his
eyebrows rising coldly, “that I am incapable
of looking after myself? ”

"Yes, I do. Why, dammit, you can't even
dress for dinner, apparently, without getting
mud all over your shirt-front.”

Roland’s cue had been long in coming, but
it had arrived at a very acceptable moment.

"If you really want to know how that mud
came to be on my shirt-front. Uncle Joseph,”
he said, with quiet dignity, "I got it saving
a man’s life.”

"Eh? What? How?”

"A man slipped on the pavement as I was
passing through Grosvenor Square on my
way here. It was raining, you know, and
I ”

"You walked here?”

“Yes. And just as I reached the corner of
Duke Street ”

‘Walked here in the rain? There you are!
Lucy would never let you do a foolish thing
like that."

" It began to rain after I had started."

"Lucy would never have let you start.”

"Are you interested in my story, uncle,”
said Roland, stiffly, “ or shall we go upstairs? ”

214 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“Eh? My dear boy, of course, of course.
Most interested. Want to hear the whole
thing from beginning to end. You say it was
raining and this fellow slipped off the pave-
ment. And then I suppose a car or a taxi or
something came along suddenly and you
pulled him out of danger. Yes, go on, my
boyW’

“How do you mean, go on?” said Roland,
morosely. He felt like a public speaker whose
chairman has appropriated the cream of his
speech and inserted it in his own introductory
remarks. “That’s all there is.”

" Well, who was the man? Did he ask you
for your name and address? ”

"He did.”

“Good! A young fellow once did some-
thing very similar to what you did, and the
man turned out to be a millionaire and left
him his entire fortune. I remember reading
about it.”

“In the Family Herald, no doubt?”

“Did your man look like a millionaire?”

“He did not. He looked like what he
actually was — the proprietor of a small bird-
and-snake shop in the Seven Dials.”

“Oh!” said Sir Joseph, a trifle dashed.
“Well, I must tell Lucy about this,” he said,
brightening. “She will be tremendously ex-
cited. Just the sort of thing to appeal to a

SOMETHING SQUISHY 215

warm-hearted girl like her. Look here, Ro-
land, why don’t you marry Lucy? "

Roland came to a swift decision. It had
not been his intention to lay bare his secret
dreams to this pertinacious old blighter, but
there seemed no other way of stopping him.
He drained a glass of port and spoke crisply.

“Uncle Joseph, I love somebody else."

“Eh? What’s that? Who?”

"This is, of course, strictly between our-
selves.”

"Of course.”

"Her name is Wickham. I expect you
know the family? The Hertfordshire Wick-
hams.”

"Hertfordshire Wickhams!” Sir Joseph
snorted with extraordinary violence. "Bosher
Street Wickhams, you mean. If it's Roberta
Wickham, a red-headed hussy who ought to be
smacked and sent to bed without her supper,
that's the girl I fined this morning.”

"You fined her! ” gasped Roland.

"Five pounds,” said his uncle, complacently.
"Wish I could have given her five years.
Menace to the public safety. How on earth
did you get to know a girl like that? ”

" I met her at a dance. I happened to men-
tion that I was a critic of some small standing,
and she told me that her mother wrote novels.
I chanced to receive one of Lady Wickham’s

21 6 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

books for review shortly afterwards, and the —
er — favourable tone of my notice apparently
gave her some pleasure.” Roland’s voice
trembled slightly, and he blushed. Only he
knew what it had cost him to write eulo-
gistically of that terrible book. ‘‘She has
invited me down to Skeldings, their place in
Hertfordshire, for the week end to-morrow.”

“ Send her a telegram.”

" Saying what? ”

‘‘That you can’t go.”

"But I am going.” It is a pretty tough
thing if a man of letters who has sold his
critical soul is not to receive the reward of his
crime. " I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

"Don’t you be a fool, my boy,” said Sir
Joseph. " I’ve known you all your life — know
you better than you know yourself — and I
tell you it's sheer insanity for a man like you to
dream of marrying a girl like that. Forty
miles an hour she was going, right down the
middle of Piccadilly. The constable proved it
up to the hilt. You’re a quiet, sensible fellow,
and you ought to marry a quiet, sensible girl.
You're what I call a rabbit.”

"A rabbit!”

"There is no stigma attached to being a
rabbit,” said Sir Joseph, pacifically. "Every
man with a grain of sense is one. It simply
means that you prefer a normal, wholesome

SOMETHING SQUISHY 217

life to gadding about like a — like a non-
rabbit. You’re going out of your class, my
boy. You’re trying to change your zoological
species, and it can’t be done. Half the
divorces to-day are due to the fact that rabbits
won’t believe they’re rabbits till it’s too late.
It is the peculiar nature of the rabbit ”

"I think we had better join the ladies,
Uncle Joseph,” said Roland, frostily. "Aunt
Emily will be wondering what has become
of us.”

In spite of the innate modesty of all heroes,
it was with something closely resembling
chagrin that Roland discovered, on going to
his club in the morning, that the Press of
London was unanimously silent on the subject
of his last night’s exploit. Not that one ex-
pected anything in the nature of publicity, of
course, or even desired it. Still, if there had
happened to be some small paragraph under
some such title as "Gallant Behaviour of an
Author” or "Critical Moment for a Critic,”
it would have done no harm to the sale of that
little book of thoughtful essays which Blenkin-
sop’s had just put on the market.

And the fellow had seemed so touchingly
grateful at the time.

Pawing at Roland's chest with muddy hands
he had told him that he would never forget

218 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

this moment as long as he lived. And he
had not bothered even to go and call at a
newspaper office.

Well, well! He swallowed his disappoint-
ment and a light lunch and returned to his
flat, where he found Bryce, his man-servant,
completing the packing of his suit-case.

"packing?” said Roland. “That’s right.
Did those socks arrive? ”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good!” said Roland. They were some
rather special gents' half-hose from the
Burlington Arcade, subtly passionate, and
he was hoping much from them. He wan-
dered to the table, and became aware that on
it lay a large cardboard box. " Hullo, what’s
this? ”

"A man left it a short while ago, sir. A
somewhat shabbily-dressed person. The note
accompanying it is on the mantelpiece, sir.”

Roland went to the mantelpiece ; and,
having inspected the dirty envelope for a
moment with fastidious distaste, opened it
in a gingerly manner.

“The box appears to me, sir,” continued
Bryce, “to contain something alive. It
seemed to me that I received the impression of
something squirming.”

"Good Lord!” exclaimed Roland, staring
at the letter.

SOMETHING SQUISHY

219

"Sir?"

"It’s a snake. That fool has sent me a
snake. Of all the ”

A hearty ringing at the front-door bell
interrupted him. Bryce, rising from the suit-
case, vanished silently. Roland continued to
regard the unwelcome gift with a peevish
frown.

"Miss Wickham, sir," said Bryce at the
door.

The visitor, who walked springily into the
room, was a girl of remarkable beauty.
She resembled a particularly good-looking
schoolboy who had dressed up in his sister's
clothes.

"Ah! " she said, cocking a bright eye at the
suit-case. "I'm glad you’re bustling about.
We ought to be starting soon. I'm going to
drive you down in the two-seater." She began
a restless tour of the room. "Hullo!” she
said, arriving at the box. “What might this
be?” She shook it experimentally. “I say!
There’s something squishy inside!”

"Yes, it’s ”

"Roland,” said Miss Wickham, having con-
ducted further experiments," immediate in-
vestigation is called for. Inside this box
there is most certainly some living organism.
When you shake it it definitely squishes.”

"It's all right. It's only a snake.”

220

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“Snake!”

“Perfectly harmless,” he hastened to assure
her. “The fool expressly states that. Not
that it matters, because I’m going to send it
straight back, unopened.”

Miss Wickham squeaked with pleased ex-
citement.

0 Who’s been sending you snakes? ”

Roland coughed diffidently.

“ I happened to — er — save a man’s life last
night. I was coming along at the comer of
Duke Street ”

"Now, isn’t that an extraordinary thing?”
said Miss Wickham, meditatively. “Here
have I lived all these years and never thought
of getting a snake ! ”

“ when a man ”

“The one thing every young girl should
have.”

“ slipped off the pavement ”

“There are the most tremendous possibili-
ties in a snake. The diner-out’s best friend.
Pop it on the table after the soup and be
Society's pet.”

Roland, though nothing, of course, could
shake his great love, was conscious of a pass-
ing feeling of annoyance.

“I’ll tell Bryce to take the thing back to
the man,” he said, abandoning his story as a
total loss.

SOMETHING SQUISHY 221

“Take it back?” said Miss Wickham,
amazed. “ But, Roland, what frightful waste !
Why, there are moments in life when knowing
where to lay your hand on a snake means more
than words can tell." She started. “Golly!
Didn’t you once say that old Sir Joseph
What's-his-name — the beak, you know — was
your uncle? He fined me five of the best
yesterday for absolutely crawling along Pic-
cadilly. He needs a sharp lesson. He must
be taught that he can’t go about the place
persecuting the innocent like that. I’ll tell
you what. Ask him to lunch here and hide the
thing in his napkin! That’ll make him think
a bit!”

" No, no ! ” cried Roland, shuddering strongly.

" Roland ! For my sake ! ”

“No, no, really!”

“And you said dozens of times that you
would do anything in the world for me!”
She mused. “Well, at least let me tie a
string to it and dangle it out of the window
in front of the next old lady that comes
along.”

"No, no, please! I must send it back to
the man ”

Miss Wickham's discontent was plain, but
she seemed to accept defeat.

“Oh, all right if you’re going to refuse me
every little thing! But let me tell you, my

222

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

lad, that you're throwing away the laugh of
a lifetime. Wantonly and callously chucking
it away. Where is Bryce? Gone to earth
in the kitchen, I suppose. I’ll go and give
him the thing while you strap the suit-case.
We ought to be starting, or we sha’n't get
there by tea-time.”

"Let me do it.”

‘•No, I’ll do it.”

"You mustn't trouble.”

"No trouble,” said Miss Wickham, amiably.

In this world, as has been pointed out in
various ways by a great many sages and
philosophers, it is wiser for the man who
shrinks from being disappointed not to look
forward too keenly to moments that promise
pleasure. Roland Attwater, who had antici-
pated considerable enjoyment from his drive
down to Skeldings Hall, soon discovered, when
the car had threaded its way through the
London traffic and was out in the open
country, that the conditions were not right
for enjoyment. Miss Wickham did not appear
to share the modem girl’s distaste for her
home. She plainly wanted to get there as
quickly as possible. It seemed to Roland
that from the time they left High Barnet to
the moment when with a grinding of brakes,
they drew up at the door of Skeldings Hall the

SOMETHING SQUISHY 223

two-seater had only touched Hertfordshire at
odd spots.

Yet, as they alighted, Roberta Wickham
voiced a certain dissatisfaction with her work.

"Forty-three minutes," she said, frowning
at her watch. " I can do better than that.”

"Can you?” gulped Roland. "Can you,
indeed?”

"Well, we're in time for tea, anyhow.
Come in and meet the mater. Forgotten
Sports of the Past — Number Three, Meeting
the Mater.”

Roland met the mater. The phrase, how-
ever, is too mild and inexpressive and does not
give a true picture of the facts. He not merely
met the mater ; he was engulfed and swallowed
up by the mater. Lady Wickham, that
popular novelist ("Strikes a singularly fresh
jpta.” — R. Moresby Attwafer in the New
Examiner), was delighted to see her guest.
Welcoming Roland to her side, she proceeded
to strike so many singularly fresh notes that
he was unable to tear himself away till it was
time to dress for dinner. She was still talking
with unimpaired volubility on the subject
of her books, of which Roland had been kind
enough to write so appreciatively, when the
gong went.

"Is it as late as that?” she said, surprised,
releasing Roland, who had thought it later.

224 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"We shall have to go on with our little talk
after dinner. You know your room? No?
Oh, well, Claude will show you. Claude, will
you take Mr. Attwater up with you? His
room is at the end of your corridor. By the
way, you don’t know each other, do you?
Sir Claude Lynn — Mr. Attwater."

The two men bowed; but in Roland’s bow
there was not that heartiness which we like
to see in our friends when we introduce them
to fellow-guests. A considerable part of the
agony which he had been enduring for the
last two hours had been caused not so much
by Lady Wickham's eloquence, though that
had afflicted him sorely, as by the spectacle
of this man Lynn, whoever he might be,
monopolizing the society of Bobbie Wickham
in a distant corner. There had been to him
something intolerably possessive about the
back of Sir Claude’s neck as he bent toward
Miss Wickham. It was the neck of a man who
is being much more intimate and devotional
than a jealous rival cares about.

The close-up which he now received of this
person did nothing to allay Roland’s appre-
hension. The man was handsome, sicken-
ingly handsome, with just that dark, dignified,
clean-cut handsomeness which attracts im-
pressionable girls. It was, indeed, his dignity
that so oppressed Roland now. There was

SOMETHING SQUISHY 225

about Sir Claude Lynn’s calm and supercilious
eye that made a fellow feel that he belonged to
entirely the wrong set in London and that his
trousers were bagging at the knees.

"A most delightful man.” whispered Lady
Wickham, as Sir Claude moved away to open
the door for Bobbie. "Between ourselves,
the original of Captain Mauleverer, D.S.O.,
in my Blood Will Tell. Very old family, ever
so much money. Plays polo splendidly. And
tennis. And golf. A superb shot. Member
for East Bittlesham, and I hear on all sides
that he may be in the Cabinet any day."

"Indeed?” said Roland, coldly.

It seemed to Lady Wickham, as she sat with
him in her study after dinner — she had stated
authoritatively that he would much prefer a
quiet chat in that shrine of literature to any
shallow revelry that might be going on else-
where — that Roland was a trifle distrait. No-
body could have worked harder to entertaip
him than she. She read him the first seven
chapters of the new novel on which she was
engaged, and told him in gratifying detail the
plot of the rest of it, but somehow all did not
seem well. The young man, she noticed, had
developed a habit of plucking at his hair;
and once he gave a sharp, gulping cry which
startled her. I ady Wickham began to feel

226

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

disappointed in Roland, and was not sorry
when he excused himself.

"I wonder," he said, in a rather over-
wrought sort of way, “if you would mind
if I just went and had a word with Miss Wick-
ham? I — I — there’s something I wanted to
ask her.”

"Certainly,” said Lady Wickham, without
warmth. "You will probably find her in the
billiard-room. She said something about
having a game with Claude. Sir Claude is
wonderful at billiards. Almost like a pro-
fessional."

Bobbie was not in the billiard-room, but
Sir Claude was, practising dignified cannons
which never failed to come off. At Roland’s
entrance he looked up like an inquiring
statue.

"Miss Wickham?" he said. "She left half
an hour ago. I think she went to bed.” ^

He surveyed Roland’s flushed dishevelment
for a moment with a touch of disapproval,
then resumed his cannons. Roland, though
he had that on his mind concerning which he
desired Miss Wickham's counsel and sym-
pathy, felt that it would have to stand over
till the morning. Meanwhile, lest his hostess
should pop out of the study and recapture
him, he decided to go to bed himself.

He had just reached the passage where his

SOMETHING SQUISHY zvj

haven lay, when a door which had apparently
been standing ajar opened and Bobbie
appeared, draped in a sea-green negligee of such
a calibre that Roland's heart leaped con-
vulsively a nd he clutched at the wall for
support.

"Oh, there you are," she said, a little
petulantly. "What a time you’ve been!”

“Your mother was "

“Yes, I suppose she would be,” said Miss
Wickham, understanding^. “Well, I only
wanted to tell you about Sidney.”

"Sidney? Do you mean Claude? ”

" No. Sidney. The snake. I was in your
room just after dinner, to see if you had every-
thing you wanted, and I noticed the box on
your dressing-table.”

" I've been trying to get hold of you all the
evening to ask you what to do about that,”
said Roland, feverishly. " I was most awfully
upset when I saw the beastly thing. How
Bryce came to be such an idiot as to put it in
the car ”

"He must have misunderstood me,” said
Bobbie, with a clear and childlike light shining
in her hazel eyes. "I suppose he thought I
said, 'Put this in the back' instead of 'Take
this back.' But what I wanted to say was
that it’s all right.”

"All right? ”

228

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Yes. That's why I've been waiting up
to see you. I thought that, when you went
to your room and found the box open, you
might be a bit worried.”

"The box open! ”

"Yes. But it's all right. It was I who
opened it.”

"Oh, but I say — you — you oughtn’t to have
don£ that. The snake may be roaming about
all over the house.”

"Oh, no, it's all right. I know where it is.”

"That’s good.”

"Yes, it’s all right. I put it in Claude’s
bed.”

Roland Attwater clutched at his hair as
violently as if he had been listening to chapter
six of Lady Wickham’s new novel.

” You — you — you — what? ”

"I put it in Claude’s bed.”

Roland uttered a little whinnying sound,
like a very old horse a very long way away.

“Put it in Claude's bed! ”

“ Put it in Claude’s bed.”

" But — but — but why? ”

"Why not?” asked Miss Wickham, reason-
ably.

"But — oh, my heavens!”

" Something on your mind? ” inquired Miss
Wickham, solicitously.

“ It will give him an awful fright.”

SOMETHING SQUISHY 229

"Jolly good for him. I was reading an
article in the evening paper about it. Did
you know that fear increases the secretory
activity of the thyroid, suprarenal, and pitui-
tary glands? Well, it does. Bucks you up,
you know. Regular tonic. It’ll be like a day
at the seaside for old Claude when he puts his
bare foot on Sidney. Well, I must be turning
in. Got that schoolgirl complexion to think
about. Good-night.”

For some minutes after he had tottered to
his room, Roland sat on the edge of the bed
in deep meditation. At one time it seemed as
if his reverie was going to take a pleasant turn.
This was when the thought presented itself
to him that he must have overestimated
the power of Sir Claude’s fascination. A
girl could not, he felt, have fallen very
deeply under a man’s spell if she started
filling his bed with snakes the moment she
left him.

For an instant, as he toyed with this
heartening reflection, something remotely re-
sembling a smile played about Roland’s sensi-
tive mouth. Then another thought came to
wipe the smile away — the realization that,
while the broad general principle of putting
snakes in Sir Claude’s bed was entirely
admirable, the flaw in the present situation

2 3 o MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

lay in the fact that this particular snake could
be so easily traced to its source. The butler,
or whoever had taken his luggage upstairs,
would be sure to remember carrying up a
mysterious box. Probably it had squished as
he carried it and was already the subject of
comment in the servants’ hall. Discovery was
practically certain.

Roland rose jerkily from his bed. There
was only one thing to be done, and he must
do it immediately, pie must go to Sir Claude’s
room and retrieve his lost pet. He crept to
the door and listened carefully. No sound
came to disturb the stillness of the house.
He stole out into the corridor.

It was at this precise moment that Sir
Claude Lynn, surfeited with cannons, put on
his coat, replaced his cue in the rack, and came
out of the billiard-room.

If there is one thing in this world that should
be done quickly or not at all, it is the removal
of one’s personal snake from the bed of a
comparative stranger. Yet Roland, brooding
over the snowy coverlet, hesitated. All his
life he had had a horror of crawling and slippery
things. At his private school, while other
boys had fondled frogs and achieved terms of
intimacy^with slow-worms, "Ke had” not' been
able to bring himself even to keep white

SOMETHING SQUISHY 231

mice. The thought of plunging his hand
between those sheets and groping for an object
of such recognized squishiness as Sidney
appalled him. And, even as he hesitated,
there came from the corridor outside the sound
of advancing footsteps.

Roland was not by nature a resourceful young
man, but even a child would have known what
to do in this crisis. There was a large cup-
board on the other side of the room, and its
door had been left invitingly open. In the
rapidity with which he bolted into this his
uncle Joseph would no doubt have seen further
convincing evidence of his rabbit-hood. He
reached it and burrowed behind a mass of
hanging clothes just as Sir Claude entered
the room.

It was some small comfort to Roland — and
at the moment he needed what comfort he
could get, however small — to find that there
was plenty of space in the cupboard. And
what was even better, seeing that he had had
no time to close the door, it was generously
filled with coats, overcoats, raincoats, and
trousers. Sir Claude Lynn was evidently
a man who believed in taking an extensive
wardrobe with him on country-house visits;
and, while he deplored the dandyism which
this implied, Roland would not have had it

232 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

otherwise. Nestling in the undergrowth, he
peered out between a raincoat and a pair of
golfing knickerbockers. A strange silence had
fallen, and he was curious to know what his
host was doing with himself.

At first he could not sight him ; but, shifting
slightly to the left, he brought him into focus,
an£ discovered that in the interval that had
passed Sir Claude had removed nearly all his
clothes and was now standing before the open
window, doing exercises.

It was not prudery that caused this spec-
tacle to give Roland a sharp shock. What
made him start so convulsively was the man’s
horrifying aspect as revealed in the nude.
Downstairs, in the conventional dinner-cos-
tume of the well-dressed man, Sir Claude
Lynn had seemed^robust and soldierly, but
nothing in his appearance then had prepared
Roland for the ghastly physique which he
exhibited now. He seemed twice his previous
size as if the removal of constricting garments
had caused him to bulge in every direction.
When he inflated his chest, it looked like a
barrel. And, though Roland in the circum-
stances would have preferred any other simile,
there was only one thing to which his rippling
muscles could be compared. They were like
snakes, and nothing but snakes. They
heaved and twisted beneath his skin just as

SOMETHING SQUISHY 233

Sidney was presumably even now heaving
and twisting beneath the sheets.

If ever there was a man, in short, in whose
bedroom one would rather not have been
concealed in circumstances which might only
too easily lead to a physical encounter, that
man was Sir Claude Lynn ; and Roland,
seeing him, winced away with a shudder so
violent that a coat-hanger which had been
trembling on the edge of its peg fell with a
disintegrating clatter.

There was a moment of complete silence:
then the trousers behind which he cowered
were snatched away, and a huge hand, groping
like the tentacle of some dreadful marine
monster, seized him painfully by the hair and
started pulling.

“Ouch!” said Roland, and came out like
like a winkle at the end of a pin.

A modesty which Roland, who was modest
himself, should have been the first to applaud
had led the other to clothe himself hastily for
this interview in a suit of pyjamas of a stupe-
fying mauve. In ali his life Roland had never
seen such a colour-scheme ; and in some curious
way the brilliance of them seemed to complete
his confusion. The result was that, instead
of plunging at once into apologies and ex-
planations, he remained staring with fallen
jaw; and his expression, taken in conjunction

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

234

with the fact that his hair, rumpled by
the coats, appeared to be standing on end,
supplied Sir Claude with a theory which
seemed to cover the case. He remembered
that Roland had had much the same cock-
eyed look when he had come into the billiard-
room. He recalled that immediately after
dinner Roland had disappeared and had not
joined the rest of the party in the drawing-
room. Obviously the fellow must have been
drinking like a fish ‘n some secret part of the
house for hours.

“Get out!” he said curtly, taking Roland
by the arm with a look of disgust and leading
him sternly to the door. An abstemious man
himself, Sir Claude Lynn had a correct horror
of excess in others. “Go and sleep it off. I
suppose you can find your way to your room?
It's the one at the end of the corridor, as you
seem to have forgotten.”

"But listen ”

“I cannot understand how a man of any
decent upbringing can make such a beast of
himself.”

“Do listen!”

“Don’t shout like that,” snapped Sir
Claude, severely. “ Good heavens, man, do
you want to wake the whole house? If you
dare to open your mouth again, I’ll break you
into little bits.”

SOMETHING SQUISHY 235

Roland found himself out in the passage,
staring at a closed door. Even as he stared
it opened sharply, and the upper half of the
mauve-clad Sir Claude popped out.

"No drunken singing in the corridor,
mind!” said Sir Claude, sternly, and dis-
appeared.

It was a little difficult to know what to do.
Sir Claude had counselled slumber, but the
suggestion was scarcely a practical one. On
the other hand there seemed nothing to be
gained by hanging about in the passage.
With slow and lingering steps Roland moved
towards his room, and had just reached it
when the silence of the night was rent by a
shattering scream ; and the next moment there
shot through the door he had left a large
body. And, as Roland gazed dumbly, a voice
was raised in deafening appeal.

" Shot-gun ! ” vociferated Sir Claude. " Help !
Shot-gun ! Bring a shotgun, somebody ! ”

There was not the smallest room for
doubt that the secretory activity of his
thyroid, suprarenal, and pituitary glands
had been increased to an almost painful
extent.

It is only in the most modern and lively
country houses that this sort of thing can
happen without attracting attention. So
quickly did the corridor fill that it seemed to

236 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Roland as if dressing-gowned figures had shot
up through the carpet. Among those present
he noticed Lady Wickham in blue, her
daughter Roberta in green, three male guests
in bath-robes, the under-housemaid in curl-
papers, and Simmons, the butler, completely
and correctly clad in full afternoon costume.
Th*y were all asking what was the matter,
but, as Lady Wickham’s penetrating voice
o’ertopped th e rest, it was to her that Sir
"Claude turned to tell his story.

‘‘A snake? " said Lady Wickham, interested.

"A snake.”

“In your bed?”

"In my bed.”

"Most unusual,” said Lady Wickham, with
a touch of displeasure.

Sir Claude’s rolling eye wandering along
the corridor, picked out Roland as he shrank
among the shadows. He pointed at him with
such swift suddenness that his hostess only
saved herself from a nasty blow by means
of some shifty'footwork.

"That’s the man!” he cried.

Lady Wickham, already ruffled, showed
signs of peevishness.

"My dear Claude,” she said, with a certain
asperity, "do come to some definite decision.
A moment ago you said there was a snake in
your room ; now you say it was a man. Be-

SOMETHING SQUISHY 237

sides, can’t you see that that is Mr. Attwater?
What would he be doing in your room? "

"I’ll tell you what he was doing. He was
putting that infernal snake in my bed. I
found him there."

"Found him there? In your bed?"

"In my cupboard. Hiding. I hauled him
out.” ' — *

All eyes were turned upon Roland. His
own he turned with a look of wistful entreaty
upon Roberta Wickham. A cavalier of the
nicest gallantry, nothing, of course, would
induce him to betray the girl; but surely she
would appreciate that the moment had come
for her to step forward and clear a good man's
name with a full explanation.

He had been too sanguine. A pretty
astonishment lit up Miss Wickham's lovely
eyes. But her equally lovely mouth did not
open.

"But Mr. Attwater has no snake,” argued
Lady Wickham. "He is a well-known man-
of-letters. Well-known men-of-letters,” she
said, stating a pretty generally recognized
fact, " do not take snakes with them when they
go on visits.”

A new voice joined in the discussion.

"Begging your pardon, your ladyship.”

It was the voice of Simmons, grave and
respectful.

238 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Begging your pardon, your ladyship, it
is my belief that Mr. Attwater did have a
serpent in his possession. Thomas, who con-
veyed his baggage to his room, mentioned a
cardboard box that seemed to contain some-
thing alive.”

From the expression of the eyes that once
more raked him in his retirement, it was
plain that the assembled company were of
the opinion that it was Roland’s turn to
speak. But speech was beyond him. He had
been backing slowly for some little time, and
now, as he backed another step, the handle of
his bedroom door insinuated itself into the small
of his back. It was almost as if the thing were
hinting to him that refuge that lay beyond.

He did not resist the kindly suggestion.
With one quick, emotional movement he
turned, plunged into his room, and slammed
the door behind him.

From the corridor without came the sound
of voices in debate. He was unable to dis-
tinguish words, but the general trend of them
was clear. Then silence fell.

Roland sat on his bed, staring before him.
He was roused from his trance by a tap on
the door.

"Who’s that?” he cried, bounding up,
His eye was wild. He was prepared to sell
his life dearly.

SOMETHING SQUISHY 239

“It is I, sir. Simmons.”

“What do you want? "

The door opened a few inches. Through
the gap there came a hand. In the hand was
a silver salver. On the salver lay something
squishy that writhed and wriggled.

"Your serpent, sir,” said the voice of
Simmons.

It was the opinion of Roland Attwater
that he was now entitled to the remainder
of the night in peace. The hostile forces out-
side must now, he felt, have fired their last
shot. He sat on his bed, thinking deeply, if
incoherently. From time to time the clock
on the stables struck the quarters, but he did
not move. And then into the silence it
seemed to him that some sound intruded — a
small tapping sound that might have been the
first tentative efforts of a very young wood-
pecker just starting out in business for itself.
It was only after this small noise had con-
tinued for some moments that he recognized
it for what it was. Somebody was knocking
softly on his door.

There are moods in which even the mildest
man will turn to bay, and there gleamed in
Roland Attwater’s eyes as he strode to the
door and flung it open a baleful light . And
such was his militant condition that, even

2 4 o MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

when he glared out and beheld Roberta
Wickham, still in that green negligee, the
light did not fade away. He regarded her
malevolently.

"I thought I’d better come and have a
word with you,” whispered Miss Wickham.

“Indeed?” said Roland.

“I wanted to explain.”

“Explain!”

“Well,” said Miss Wickham, "you may not
think there’s any explanation due to you, but
I really feel there is. Oh, yes, I do. You
see, it was this way. Claude had asked me
to marry him.”

“And so you put a snake in his bed? Of
course! Quite natural ! ”

“Well, you see, he was so' frightfully per-
fect and immaculate and dignified and — oh,
well, you’ve seen him for yourself, so you know
what I mean. He was too darned over-
powering — that’s what I’m driving at —
and it seemed to me that if I could only
see him really human and undignified —
just once — I might — well, you see what I
mean? ”

“And the experiment, I take it, was
successful? "

Miss Wickham wriggled her small toes
inside her slippers.

“It depends which way you look at it.

SOMETHING SQUISHY 241

I’m not going to marry him, if that’s what
you mean."

"I should have thought,” said Roland,
coldly, "that Sir Claude behaved in a manner
sufficiently — shall I say human? — to satisfy
even you.”

Miss Wickham giggled jreminiscently.

"He did leap, didn’t he} But us hll off,
just the same.” *

"Might I ask why?”

"Those pyjamas,” said Miss Wickham,
firmly. "The moment I caught a glimpse of
them, I said to myself, ‘ No wedding bells for
me!’ No! I’ve seen too much of life to be
optimistic about a man who wears mauve
pyjamas.” She plunged for a space into
maiden meditation. When she spoke again,
it was on another aspect of the affair. "I'm
afraid mother is rather cross with you,
Roland.”

"You surprise me!”

"Never mind. You can slate her next
novel.”

"I intend to,” said Roland, grimly, remem
bering what he had suffered in the study from
chapters one to seven of it.

"But meanwhile I don’t think you had
better meet her again just yet. Do you
know, I really think the best plan would be
for you to go away to-night without saying

242 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

good-bye. There is a very good milk-train
which gets you into London at six-forty-five."

"When does it start?"

"At three-fifteen.”

"I’ll take it," said Roland.

There was a pause. Roberta Wickham
drew a step closer.

"Roland,” she said, softly, "you were a
dea f not to give me away. I do appreciate
it so much.”

"Not at all!”

"There would have been an awful row. I
expect mother would have taken away my

Ca " Ghastly!"

“I want to see you again quite soon,
Roland. I’m coming up to London next
week. Will you give me lunch? And then
we might go and sit in Kensington Gardens or
somewhere where it's quiet.”

Roland eyed her fixedly.

"I’ll drop you a line,” he said.

Sir Joseph Moresby was an early break-
faster. The hands of the clock pointed to
five minutes past eight as he entered his
dining-room with a jaunty and hopeful step.
There were, his senses told him, kidneys and
bacon beyond that door. To his surprise he
found that there was also his nephew Roland.

SOMETHING SQUISHY 943

The young man was pacing the carpet rest-
lessly. He had a rumpled look, as if he had
slept poorly, and his eyes were pink about the
rims.

"Roland!” exclaimed Sir Joseph. "Good
gracious! What are you doing here? Didn't
you go to Skeldings after all? ”

"Yes, I went,” said Roland, in a strange,
toneless voice.

"Then what ?”

"Uncle Joseph,” said Roland, "you remem-
ber what we were talking about at dinner?
Do you really think Lucy would have me if
I asked her to marry me?”

"What! My dear boy, she’s been in love
with you for years.”

“Is she up yet? ”

“No. She doesn't breakfast till nine.”

"I’ll wait.”

Sir Joseph grasped his hand.

" Roland, my boy ” he began.

But there was that on Roland’s mind that
made him unwilling to listen to set speeches.

"Uncle Joseph,” he said, "do you mind if
I join you for a bite of breakfast? ”

"My dear boy, of course ”

"Then I wish you would ask them to be
frying two or three eggs and another rasher
or so. While I'm waiting I’ll be starting on a
a few kidneys.”

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

244

It was ten minutes past nine when Sir
Joseph happened to go into the morning-
room. He had supposed it empty, but he
perceived that the large armchair by the
window was occupied by his nephew Roland.
He was leaning back with the air of one whom
the world is treating well. On the floor beside
him ^at Lucy, her eyes fixed adoringly on the
young man's face.

“Yes, yes,” she was saying. “How won-
derful! Do go on, darling.”

Sir Joseph tiptoed out, unnoticed. Roland
was speaking as he softly closed the door.

"Well,” Sir Joseph heard him say, “it was
raining, you kr,ow, and just as I reached the
comer of Duke Street ”

VIII

THE AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE
MATER

“AND then,” said Mr. Mulliner, “there
was the case of Dudley Finch.”

He looked inquiringly at his glass,
found that it was three-parts full, and im-

mediately proceeded to resume the Saga of
his cousin’s daughter, Roberta. ««— «

"At the moment at which I would intro-

duce sDudley Finch to you,” said Mr. Mul-
liner, “we find him sitting in the lobby of
Claridge’s Hotel, looking at his watch with
the glazing eye of a starving man. Five
minutes past two was the time it registered,
and Roberta Wickham had promised to meet
him for lunch at one-thirty sharp. He heaved
a p laintive sigh, and a faint sense of griev ance
began to steal over him. Impious though it
was to feel that that angelic girl had any
faults, there was no denying, he told himself,
that this tendency of hers to keep a fellow

246 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

waiting for his grub amounted to something
very like a flaw in an otherwise perfect nature.
He rose from his chair and, having dragged
his emaciated fo rm to the door, tottered out
into Brook Street and stood gazing up and
down it like a male Lady of Shalott.

Standing there in the weak sunlight (said
Mr. Mulliner), Dudley Finch made a singu-
larly impressive picture. He was — sar-
torially — so absolutely right in every respect.
From his brilliantined hair to his gleaming
shoes, from his fawn-coloured spats to his
Old Etonian tie, he left no loophole to the
sternest critic. You felt as you saw him
that if this was the sort of chap who lunched
at Claridge’s, old man Claridge was in luck.

It was not admiration, however, that
caused the earnest-looking young man in the
soft hat to stop as he hurried by. It was sur-
prise. He stared wide-eyed at Dudley.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "I
thought you were on your way to Australia."

''/No,” said Dudley Finch, "not on my
way to Australia.” His smooth forehead
'^winkled in a frown. " Rolie, old thing,” he
said, with gentle reproach, “you oughtn’t to
go about London in a hat like that.” Roland
Attwater was his cousin, and a man does not
like to see his relatives careering all over the

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER *47

Metropolis looking as if cats had brought
them in. " And your tie doesn’t match your
socks.”

He shook his head sorrowfully. Roland
was a literary man, and, worse, had been
educated at an inferior school — Harrow, or
some such name, Dudley understood that it
was called; but even so he ought to have
more proper feeling about the vital things of
life.

" Never mind my hat,” said Roland. “ Why
aren’t you on your way to Australia?”

"Oh, that's all right. Broadhurst had a
cable, and isn't sailing till the fifteenth.”

Roland Attwater looked relieved. Like all
the more serious-minded members of the
family, he was deeply ^concerned about his
cousin’s future. With regard to this there
had been for some time past a little friction,
a little difficulty in reconciling two sharply
conflicting points of view. The family had
wanted Dudley to go into his Uncle John's
business in the City; whereas what Dudley
desired was that some broad-minded sports-
man should slip him a few hundred quid and
enable him to start a new dance-club. A
compromise had been effected when his god-
father, Mr. Sampson Broadhurst, arriving
suddenly from Australia, had offered to take
the young man back with him and teach

248 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

him sheep-farming. It fortunately happening
that he was a great reader of the type of
novel in which everyone who goes to* Australia
automatically amasses a large fortune and
leaves it to the hero, Dudley had formally
announced at a family council that — taking
it by and large — Australia seemed to him a
pretty good egg, and that he had no objec-
tion to having a pop at it.

"Thank goodness,” said Roland. "I
thought you might have backed out of going
at the last moment.'*

Dudley smiled.

"Funny you should have said that, old
man. A coincidence, I mean. Because that's
just exactly what I’ve half made up my mind
to do.”

"What!”

"Absolutely. The fact is, Rolie,” said
Dudley, confidentially, " I've just met the most
topping girl. And sometimes, when I think
of buzzing off on the fifteenth and being
separated from her by all those leagues of
water, I could howl like a dog. I've a jolly
good mind to let the old man sail by him-
self, and stick here on my native heath.”

' ‘ This is appalling ! Y ou mustn’t dream ”

“She's the most wonderful girl. Knows
you, too. Roberta Wickham's her name.
She lets me call her Bobbie. She ”

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 249

He broke off abruptly. His eyes, gazing
past Roland, were shining with a holy light
of devotion. His lips had parted in a brilliant
smile.

"Yo-ho!” he cried.

Roland turned. A girl was crossing the
road ; a slim, boyish-looking girl, with shingled
hair of a glorious red. She came tripping
along with all the gay abandon of a woman
who is forty minutes late for lunch and
doesn’t give a hoot.

“Yo-ho!” yowled young Mr. Finch. “Yo
frightfully ho!”

The girl came up, smiling and debonair.

“I’m not late, am I?” she said.

“Rather not,” cooed the love-sick Dudley.
“Not a bit. Only just got here myself.”

“That’s good,” said Miss Wickham. “How
are you, Roland? ”

“Very well, thanks,” replied Roland Att-
water, stiffly.

“I must congratulate you, mustn’t I?”

“What on?” asked Dudley, puzzled.

"His engagement, of course.”

“Oh, that!” said Dudley. He knew that
his cousin had recently become engaged to
Lucy Moresby, and he had frequently mar-
velled at the lack of soul which could have
led one acquainted with the divine Roberta
to go and tack himself on to any inferior

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

250

female. He put it down to Roland having
been at Harrow.

" I hope you will be very happy."

"Thank you,” said Roland, sedately.
"Well, I must be going, Good-bye. Glad
to have seen you.”

He stalked off towards Grosvenor Square.
It seemed to Dudley that his manner was
pecifliar.

"Not a very cordial bird, old Rolie,” he
said, returning to the point at the luncheon-
table. "Biffed off a trifle abruptly, didn’t
it strike you?”

Miss Wickham sighed.

"I'm afraid Roland doesn't like me.”

"Not like you!” Dudley swallowed a
potato which, in a calmer moment, he would
have realized was some eighty degrees Fahren-
heit too warm for ^ mastication.. "Not like
you! ” he repeated, with watering eyes. “The
man must be an ass.”

"We were great friends at one time,” said
Roberta, sadly. "But ever since that snake
business ”

"Snake business?”

"Roland had a snake, and I took it with me
when he came down to Hertfordshire for the
week-end. And I put it in a man's bed, and
the mater got the impression that Roland had
done it, and he had to sneak away on a milk-

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 251

train. He's never quite forgiven me, I’m
afraid.”

"But what else could you have done?” de-
manded Dudley, warmly. " I mean to say, if
a fellow’s got a snake, naturally you put it in
some other fellow’s bed.”

"That’s just what I felt.”

" Only once in a blue moon, I mean, you get
hold of a snake. When you do, you can’t be
expected to waste it.”

"Exactly. Roland couldn’t see that,
though. Nor, for the matter of that,” con-
tinued Miss Wickham, dreamily, "could
mother.”

"I say,” said Dudley, "that reminds me.
I'd like to meet your mother.”

"Well, I’m going down there this evening.
Why don’t you come, too?”

"No, I say, really? May I?”

“Of course.”

"Rather short notice, though, isn't it?”

"Oh, that's all right. I'll send the mater a
wire. She’ll be awfully glad to see you.”

"You’re sure?”

"Oh, rather! Awfully glad.”

"Well, that’s fine. Thanks ever so much."

"I’ll motor you down.”

Dudley hesitated. Something of the bright-
ness died out of his fair young face. He had
had experience of Miss Wickham as a .chauf-

MR. MULL1NER SPEAKING

2 52

feuse and had died half-a-dozen deaths in the
extremely brief space of time which it had
taken her to thread her way through half a
mile of traffic.

"If it’s all the same,” he said, nervously,
"I think I’ll pop down by train.”

"Just as you like. The best one’s the six-
fifteen. Gets you there in time for dinner.”

"Six-fifteen? Right. Liverpool Street, of
course? Just bring a suit-case, I suppose?
Fine! I say, you’re. really sure your mother
won’t think I’m butting in? ”

"Of course not. She’ll be awfully glad to
see you.”

"Splendid!” said Dudley.

The six-fifteen train was just about to draw
out of Liverpool Street Station when Dudley
flung himself and suit-case into it that evening.
He had rather imprudently stepped in at the
Drones Club on his way and, while having a
brief refresher at the bar, had got into an
interesting argument with a couple of the lads.
There had only just been time for him to race
to the cloak-room, retrieve his suit-case, and
make a dash for the train. Fortunately, he had
chanced upon an excellent taxi, and here he
was, a little out of breath from the final sprint
down the platform, but in every other respect
absolutely all-righto. He leaned back against
the cushions and gave himself up to thought.

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 253

From thinking of Bobbie he drifted shortly
into meditation on her mother. If all went
well, he felt this up-to-the-present-unmet
mater was destined to be an important figure
in his life. It was to her that he would have
to go after Bobbie, hiding her face shyly
on his waistcoat, had whispered that she
had loved him from the moment they had
met.

"Lady Wickham,” he would say. "No,
not Lady Wickham — mother!”

Yes, that was undoubtedly the way to
start. After that it would be easy. Pro-
viding, of course, that the mater turned out
to be one of the better class of maters and
took to him from the beginning. He tried
to picture Lady Wickham, and had evolved
a mental portrait of a gentle, sweet-faced
woman of latish middle-age when the train
pulled up at a station, and a lucky glimpse of
a name on one of the lamps told Dudley that
this was where he alighted.

Some twenty minutes later he was being
relieved of his suit-case and shown into a
room that looked like a study of sorts.

"The gentleman, m'lady,” boomed the
butler, and withdrew.

It was rather a rummy way of announcing the
handsome guest, felt Dudley, but he was not
able to give much thought to the matter, for

254 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

from a chair in front of the desk at which she
had been writing there now rose a most for-
midable person, at the sight of whom his heart
missed a beat. So vivid had been that image
of sweet-faced womanhood which he had
fashioned that his hostess in the flesh had
the effect of being a changeling.

Beauty, as it has been well said, is largely
in {fie eye of the beholder, and it may be
stated at once that Lady Wickham’s particu-
lar type did not appeal to Dudley. He pre-
ferred the female eye to be a good deal less
like a combination of gimlet and X-ray, and
his taste in chins was something a little softer
and not quite so reminiscent of a battleship
going into action. Bobbie’s mater might, as
Bobbie had predicted, be awfully glad to see
him, but she did not look it. And suddenly
there came over him like a wave the realization
that the check suit which he had selected so
carefully was much too bright. At the tailor's,
and subsequently at the Drones Club, it had
had a pleasing and cheery effect, but here in
this grim study he felt that it made him look
like an absconding bookmaker.

"You are very late,” said Lady Wickham.

"Late? " quavered Dudley. The train had
seemed to him to be making more or less good
going.

" I supposed you would be here early in the

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 255

afternoon. But perhaps you have brought a
flashlight apparatus?"

"Flashlight apparatus?”

"Have you not brought a flashlight ap-
paratus? ”

Dudley shook his head. He prided himself
on being something of an authority on what
the young visitor should take with him on
country-house visits, but this was a new one.

"No,” he said, "'no flashlight apparatus.”

"Then how,” demanded Lady Wickham,
with some heat, "do you imagine that you
can take photographs at this time of night?”

"Ah!” said Dudley, vaguely. "See what
you mean, of course. Take a bit of doing,
what? ”

Lady Wickham seemed to become moder-
ately resigned.

"Oh, well, I suppose they can send some-
one down to-morrow.”

"That’s right,” said Dudley, brightening.

"In the meantime — this is where I work.”

"No, really?”

‘Yes. All my books have been .written
at this desk.”

"Fancy that!” said Dudley. He remem-
bered having heard Bobbie mention that Lady
Wickham wrote novels.

"I get my inspirations, however, in the
garden for the most part. Generally the rose-

256 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

garden. I like to sit there in the mornings and
think.”

"And what,” agreed Dudley, cordially,
"could be sweeter? ”

His hostess regarded him curiously. A
sense of something wrong seemed to come
upon her.

"You are from Milady’s Boudoir?” she
a&ed, suddenly.

"From what was that, once again?” asked
Dudley.

"Are you that man the editor of Milady's
Boudoir was sending down to interview me? ”

Dudley could answer this one.

"No,” he said.

"No? ” echoed Lady Wickham.

"Most absolutely not-o.” said Dudley,
firmly.

"Then who,” demanded Lady Wickham,
“are you? ”

"My name’s Dudley Finch.”

"And to what,” asked his hostess in a
manner so extraordinarily like that of his late
grandmother that Dudley's toes curled in their
shoes, "am I to attribute the honour of this

Dudley blinked.

"Why, I thought you knew all about it.”

"I know nothing whatever about it.”

‘Didn’t Bobbie send you a wire?”

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 257

“He did not. Nor do I know who Bobbie
may be."

“Miss Wickham, I mean. Your daughter
Roberta. She told me to buzz down here for
the night, and said she would send you a wire
paving the way, so to speak. Oh, I say, this
is a bit thick. Fancy her forgetting!”

For the second time that day a disagreeable
feeling that his idol was after all not entirely
perfect stole upon Dudley. A girl, he meant,
oughtn’t to lure a bloke down to her mater’s
house and then forget to send a wire tipping
the old girl off. No, he meant to say ! Pretty
dashed casual, he meant.

“Oh," said Lady Wickham, "you are a
friend of my daughter? ”

"Absolutely."

“I see. And where is Roberta?”

“She's tooling down in the car.”

Lady Wickham clicked her tongue.

"Roberta is becoming too erratic for en-
durance,” she said.

" I say, you know,” said Dudley, awkwardly,
"if I'm in the way, you know, just speak the
word and I’ll race off to the local pub. I
mean to say, don’t want to butt in, I mean.”

“Not at all, Mr. ”

"Finch.”

“Not at all, Mr. Finch. I am only too
delighted,” said Lady Wickham, looking at

aj8 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

him as if he were a particularly loathsome slug
which had interrupted some beautiful reverie
of hers in the rose-garden, "that you were
able to come.” She touched the bell. “Oh,
Simmons,” she said, as the butler appeared,
"in which room did you put Mr. Finch’s
luggage? ”

^"In the Blue Room, m’lady.”

"Then perhaps you will show him the way
there. He will wish to dress. Dinner,” she
added to Dudley, .“will be at eight o’clock.”

"Righto!” said Dudley. He was feeling a
little happier now. Formidable old bird as
this old bird undoubtedly was, he was pretty
confident that she would melt a bit when once
he had got the 'good old dress-clothes draped
about his person. He was prepared to stand
or fall by his dress-clothes. There are a num-
ber of tailors in London who can hack up a
bit of broadcloth and sew it together in soi a
sort of shape, but there is only one who c;
construct a dress-suit so that it blends with
the figure and seems as beautiful as a summer's
dawn. It was this tailor who enjoyed the
benefit of Dudley's patronage. Yes, Dudley
felt as he entered the Blue Room, in about
twenty minutes old Madame Lafarge was due
to get her eye knocked out.

In the brief instant before he turned on the
light he could dimly see that perfect suit laid

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 259

out on the bed, and it was with something of
the feeling of a wanderer returning home that
he pressed the switch.

Light flooded the room, and Dudley stood
there blinking.

But, no matter how much he blinked, the
awful sight which had met his eyes refused to
change itself in the slightest detail. What
was laid out on the bed was not his dress-
clothes, but the most ghastly collection of
raiment h e had ever beheld. He blin ked once
again as a forlo rn hope, and then totterecf
forward.

He stood looking down at the foul things,
his heart ice within him. Reading from left
to right, fhe objects on the bcd-'were as fol-
lows: A pair of short white woollen socks; a
crimson made-up bow-tie of enoijnous size;

»sort of middy-blouse arrangement ; a pair of
,'^ue velvet knickerbockers; and finally — and
iih was this that seemed to Dudley to make it
all so sad and hopeless — a very small sailor-
hat with a broad blue ribbon, across which in
large white letters ran the legend H.M.S.
S'ee-Sik.

On the floor were^pair of brown shoes with
strap-and-buckle attachment. They seemed
to be roomy number twelves.

Dudley sprang to the bell. A footman
presented himself.

260 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“Sir?” said the footman.

“What,” demanded Dudley, wildly, “what
is all this? "

“I found them in your suit-case, sir.”

“But where are my dress-clothes?”

"No dress-clothes in the suit -case, sir.”

A bright light shone upon Dudley. ' That
argument with those two birds at the Drones
had, he now recalled, been on the subject of
fancy-dress. Both birds were dashing off to
a fancy-dress ball that night, and one bird had
appealed to Dudley to support him against
the other bird in his contention that at these
affairs the prudent man played for safety and
went as a Pierrot. The second bird had said
that he would sooner be dead in a ditch than t
don any such unimaginative costume. He
was going as a small boy, he said, and with a
pang Dudley remembered having laughed
mockingly and prophesied that he would look
the most priceless ass. And then he had
sprinted off and collared the man’s bag in
mistake for his own.

“ Look here,” he said, “ I can’t possibly come
down to dinner in those ! ”

"No, sir?” said the footman, respectfully,
but with a really inhuman lack of interest and
sympathy.

“You’d better leg it to the old girl’s room
I mean,” said Dudley, recollecting him-

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 261

self, "you had better go to Lady Wickham and
inform her that Mr. Finch presents his com-
pliments and I’m awfully sorry but he has
mislaid his dress-clothes, so he will have to
come down to dinner in what I’ve got on at
present.”

"Very good, sir.”

"I say!” A horrid thought struck Dudley.
"I say, we shall be alone, what? I mean to
say, nobody else is coming to dinner? ”

"Yes, sir,” said the footman, brightly. "A
number of guests are expected, sir.”

It was a sagging and demoralized Dudley
who crawled into the dining-room a quarter
of an hour later. In spite of what moralists
say, a good conscience is not enough in itself
to enable a man to bear himself jauntily
in every crisis of life. Dudley had haa a good
upbringing, and the fact that he was dining
at a strange house in a bright check suit gave
him a consciousness of sin which he strove
vainly to overcome.

The irony of it was that in a normal frame
of mind he would have sneered loftily at the
inferior garments which clothed the other
male members of the party. On the left
sleeve of the man opposite him was a dis-
graceful wrinkle. The fellow next to the
girl in pink might have a good heart, but the
waistcoat which covered it did not fit by a mile.

262 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

And as for the tie of that other bloke down
by Lady Wickham, it was not a tie at all in
the deeper meaning of the word ; it was just
a deplorable occurrence. Yet, situated as he
was, his heart ached with envy of all these
tramps.

He ate but little. As a rule his appetite
was of the heartiest, and many a novel had
he condemned as untrue to life on the ground
that its hero was stated to have pushed his
food away untastel. Until to-night he had
never supposed that such a feat was possible.
But as course succeeded course he found
himself taking almost no practical interest
in the meal. All he asked was to get it over,
so that he could edge away and be alone with
his grief. There would doubtless be some sort
of binge in the drawing-room after dinner, but
it would not have the support of Dudley
Finch. For Dudley Finch the quiet seclu-
sion of the Blue Room.

It was as he was sitting there some two
hours later that there drifted into his mind
something Roberta had said about Roland
Attwater leaving on the milk-train. At the
time he had paid little attention to the
remark, but now it began to be borne in upon
him more and more strongly that this milk-
train was going to be of great strategic impor-
tance in his life. This ghastly house was just

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 263

the sort of house that fellows did naturally go
away from on milk-trains, and it behoved h im
to be prepared.

He rang the bell once more.

"Sir?” said the footman.

"I say,” said Dudley, "what time does the
milk-train leave?”

"Milk-train, sir?”

"Yes. Train that takes the milk, you
know.”

"Do you wish for milk, sir?”

"No!” Dudley fought down a desire to
stun this man with one of the number twelve
shoes. "I just want to know what time
the milk-train goes in the morning — in case
— in — er — case I am called away unexpectedly
I mean to say.”

"I will inquire, sir.”

The footman made his way to the servants’
hall, the bearer of great news.

"Guess what,” said the footman.

"Well, Thomas?” asked Simmons the
butler, indulgently.

"That bloke — the Great What-is-it,” said
Thomas — for it was by this affectionate
sobriquet t hat Dudley was now known below
stairs — " is planning to go off on the milk-
train!”

"What?” Simmons heaved his stout form
out of his chair. His face did not reflect the

264 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

gay mirth of his subordinate. "I must in-
form her ladyship. I must inform her lady-
ship at once.”

The last guest had taken his departure,
and Lady Wickham was preparing to go to
a well-earned bed when there entered to her
Simmons, grave and concerned.

"Might I speak to your ladyship?”

"Veil, Simmons?”

"Might I first take the liberty of inquiring,
m'lady, if the — er — the young gentleman in
the tweed suit is a personal friend of your
ladyship’s?”

Lady Wickham was surprised. It was
not like Simmons to stroll in and start
chatting about her guests, and for a moment
she was inclined to say as much; then
something told her that by doing so she
would miss information of interest.

"He says he is a friend of Miss Roberta,
Simmons,” she said graciously.

"Says!” said the butler, and there
was no eluding the sinister meaning in his
voice.

"What do you mean. Simmons?”

"Begging your pardon, m’lady, I am
convinced that this person is here with some
criminal intention. Thomas reports that
his suit-case contained a complete disguise.”

"Disguise! What sort of disguise?”

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 265

“Thomas did not convey that very clearly,
your ladyship, but I understand that it was
of a juvenile nature. And just now, m’lady,
the man has been making inquiries as to the
time of departure of the milk-train.'’

“Milk-train!”

“Thomas also states, m’lady, that the
man was visibly took aback when he learned
that there were guests expected here to-night.
If you ask me, your ladyship, it was the
man’s intention to make what I might term
a quick clcan-up immediately after dinner
and escape on the nine-fifty-seven. Foiled
in that by the presence of the guests, he is
going to endeavour to collect the swag in the
small hours and get away on the milk-train.”

“Simmons! ”

“That is my opinion, your ladyship.”

“Good gracious! He told me that Miss
Roberta had said to him that she was coming
down here to-night. She has not come!”

“A ruse, m’lady. To inspire confidence.”

“Simmons,” said Lady Wickham, rising
to the crisis like the strong woman she was,
"you must sit up to-night!”

“With a gun, m'lady,” cried the butler,
with a sportsman’s enthusiasm.

“Yes, with a gun. And if you hear him
prowling about you must come and wake
me instantly.”

266 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

“Very good, your ladyship."

"You must be very quiet, of course."

"Like a mouse, your ladyship,” said
Simmons.

Dudley, meanwhile, in his refuge in the
Blue Room, had for some time past been
regretting — every moment more keenly —
that preoccupation with his troubles had led
him to deal so sparingly with his food down
there in the dining-room. The peace of the
Blue Room had soothed his nervous system,
and with calm had come the realization that
he was most confoundedly hungry. There
was something uncanny in the way Fate had
worked to do him out of his proper supply
of proteins and carbohydrates to-day.
Hungry as he had been when waiting at
Claridge’s for Bobbie, the moment she
appeared love had taken his mind off the
menu, and he had made a singularly light
lunch. Since then he had had nothing
but the few scattered mouthfuls which he
had forced himself to swallow at the dinner-
table.

He consulted his watch. It was later than
he had supposed. Much too late to ring the
bell and ask for sandwiches — even supposing
that his standing in this poisonous house had
b'-'en such as to justify the demand.

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 267

He flung himself back on the bed and tried
to doze off. That footman had said that
the milk-train left at three-fifteen, and he was
firmly resolved to catch it. The sooner he
was out of this place the better. Meanwhile,
he craved food. Any sort of food. His entire
interior organism was up on its feet, shouting
wildly for sustenance.

A few minutes later. Lady Wickham, wait-
ing tensely in her room, was informed by a
knock on the door that the hour had arrived.

"Yes?” she whispered, turning the handle
noiselessly and putting her head out.

"The man, m’lady,” breathed the voice of
Simmons in the darkness.

"Prowling?”

"Yes, m’lady,”

Dudley Finch’s unwilling hostess was a
woman of character and decision. From girl-
hood up she had been accustomed to hunting
and the other hardy sports of the aristocracy
of the countryside. And though the pursuit
of burglars had formed up to the present no
part of her experience, she approached it
without a qualm. Motioning the butler to
follow, she wrapped her dressing-gown more
closely about her and strode down the corridor.

There was plenty of noise to guide her" to her
goal. Dudley’s progress from his bed-room
to the dining-room, the fruit and biscuits on

268 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

the sideboard of which formed his objective,
had been far from quiet. Once he had tripped
over a chair, and now, as his hostess and her
attendant began to descend the stairs, he
collided with and upset a large screen. He
was endeavouring to remove the foot which
he had inadvertently put through this when
a quiet voice spoke from above.

“Can you see him, Simmons?’*

“Yes, m’lady. Dimly but adequately.”

“Then shoot if he. moves a step.”

"Very good, m’lady.”

Dudley wrenched his foot free and peered
upwards, appalled.

“I sayl” he quavered. “It’s only me, you
know! ”

Light flooded the hall.

“Only me!” repeated Dudley, feverishly.
The sight of the enormous gun in the butler’s
hands had raised his temperature to a painful
degree.

“What,” demanded Lady Wickham, coldly,
‘are you doing here, Mr. Finch?”

An increased sense of the delicacy of his
position flooded over Dudley. He was a
young man with the nicest respect for the con-
ventions, and he perceived that the situation
required careful handling. It is not tactful,
he realized, for a guest for whose benefit a
hostess has only a few hours earlier provided

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 269

a lavish banquet to announce to the said
hostess that he has been compelled by hunger
to rove the house in search of food. For a
moment he stood there, licking his lips; then
something like an inspiration came to him.

"The fact is,” he said, "I couldn’t sleep,
you know.”

"Possibly,” said Lady Wickham, “you
would have a better chance of doing so if
you were to go to bed. Is it your intention
to walk about the house all night?”

"No, no, absolutely not. I couldn’t sleep,
so I — er — I thought I would pop down and
see if I could find something to read, don’t
you know.”

"Oh, you want a book?”

"That’s right. That’s absolutely it. A
book. You’ve put it in a nutshell.”

"I will show you to the library.”

In spite of her stem disapproval of this
scoundrel who wormed his way into people’s
houses in quest of loot, a slight diminution
of austerity came to Lady Wickham as the
result of this introduction of the literary
note. She was an indefatigable novelist,
and it pleased her to place her works in the
hands of even the vilest. Ushering Dudley
into the library, she switched on the light
and made her way without hesitation to the
third shelf from the top nearest the fire-

270 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

place. Selecting one from a row of brightly
covered volumes, she offered it to him.

"Perhaps this will interest you,” she said.

Dudley eyed it dubiously.

"Oh, I say,” he protested, "I don’t know,
you know. This is one of that chap, George
Masterman’s.”

"jiWell? ” said Lady Wickham, frostily.

"He writes the most frightful bilge, I
mean. Don’t you think so?”

"I cannot say thit I do. I am possibly
biased, however, by the fact that George
Masterman is the name I write under.”

Dudley blinked.

"Oh, do you?” he babbled. "Do you?
You do, eh? Well, I mean ” An im-

perative desire to be elsewhere swept over him.
"This’ll do me,” he said, grabbing wildly at
the nearest shelf. "This will do me fine.
Thanks awfully. Good night. I mean, thanks,
thanks. I mean good night. Good night.”

Two pairs of eyes followed him as he shot
up the stairs. Lady Wickham’s were cold
and hard ; the expression in those of Simmons
was wistful. It was seldom that the butler's
professional duties allowed him the oppor-
tunity of indulging the passion for sport
which had been his since boyhood. A very
occasional pop at a rabbit was about all the
shooting he got nowadays, and the receding

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 271

Dudley made his mouth water. He fought
the craving down with a sigh.

"A nasty fellow, m’lady,'' he said.

"Quick-witted,” Lady Wickham was forced
to concede.

"Full of low cunning, m'lady.” ^mended
the butler. "All that about wanting a book.
A ruse.”

"You had better continue watching, Sim-
mons.”

"Most decidedly, your ladyship.”

Dudley sat on his bed, panting. Nothing
like this had ever happened to him before,
and for a while the desire for food left him,
overcome by a more spiritual misery. If
there was one thing in the world that gave
him the pip, it was looking like a silly idiot;
and every nerve in his body told him that
during the recent interview he must have
looked the most perfect silly idiot. Staring
bleakly before him, he re-lived every moment
of the blighted scene, and the more he exam-
ined his own share in it the worse it looked.
He quivered in an agony of shame. He
seemed to be bathed from head to foot in a
sort of prickly heat.

And then, faintly at first, but growing
stronger every moment, hunger began to
clamour once again.

272 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Dudley clenched his teeth. Something must
be done to combat this. Mind must somehow
he enabled to triumph over matter. He
glanced at the book which he had snatched
from the shelf, and for the first time that
night began to feel that Fate was with him.
Out of a library which was probably congested
with the most awful tosh, he had stumbled
first pop upon Mark Twain’s Tramp Abroad,
a book which he had not read since he was a
kid but had alwajs been meaning to read
again;-' just the sort of book, in fact, which
would enable a fellow to forget the anguish
of starvation until that milk-train went.

He opened it at random, and found with
a shock that Fate had but been playing with
him.

" It has now been many months, at the present
writing” (read Dudley), " since I have had a
nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one —
a modest, private affair all to myself. I have
selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill
of fare, which will go home in the steamer that
precedes me and b hot when I arrive — as
follows : — "

Dudley quailed. Memories of his boyhood
came to him, of the time when he had first
read what came after those last two words.

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 273

The passage had stamped itself on his mind,
for he had happened upon it at school, at a
time when he was permanently obsessed by a
wolfish hunger and too impecunious to pur-
chase anything at the school shop to keep him
going till the next meal. It had tortured him
then, and it would, he knew, torture him even
more keenly now.

Nothing, he resolved, should induce him to
go on reading. So he immediately went on.

“ Radishes . Baked apples, with cream.

" Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.

" American coffee, with real cream.

“American butter.

“Fried chicken, Southern style.

“Porterhouse steak.

"Saratoga potatoes.

"Broiled chicken, American style."

A feeble moan escaped Dudley. He en-
deavoured to close the book, but it would not
close. He tried to remove his eyes from the
page, but they wandered b'.ck like^ homing
pigeons. “

“Brook trout, from Sierra Nevada.

"Lake trout, from Tahoe.

” Sheephead and croakers, from New Or-
leans.

274 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

" Black bass, from the Mississippi.

“ American roast beef.

“Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.

" Cranberry sauce. Celery.

“Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.

“ Canvas-back duck, from Baltimore.

“Prairie hens, from Illinois.

0 Missouri partridges, broiled.

“ ’Possum. Coon.

" Boston bacon and leans.

"Bacon and greens, Southern style.”

Dudley rose from the bed. He could
endure no more. His previous experience
as a prospector after food had not been
such as to encourage further efforts in that
direction, but there comes a time when a
man recks not of possible discomfort. He
removed his shoes and tip-toed out of the
room. A familiar form advanced to meet
him along the now brightly lit corridor.

"Well?” said Simmons, the butler, shifting
his gun to the ready and massaging the
trigger with a loving forefinger.

Dudley gazed upon him with a sinking heart.

"Oh, hullo!” he said.

"What do you want?”

"Oh — er — oh, nothing.”

"You get back into that room."

"I say, listen, laddie,” said Dudley, in

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 275

desperation flinging reticence to the winds.
"I'm starving. Absolutely starving. I wish,
like a good old bird, you would just scud
down to your pantry or somewhere and get
me a sandwich or two."

" You get back into that room, you houndl ”
growled Simmons, with such intensity that
sheer astonishment sent Dudley tottering
back through the door. He had never heard
a butler talk like that. He had not supposed
that butlers could talk like that.

He put on his shoes again; and, lacing
them up, brooded tensely on this matter.
What, he asked himself, was the idea? What
was the big thought that lay behind all this?
That his hostess, alarmed by noises in the
night, should have summoned the butler to
bring firearms to her assistance was intelli-
gible. But what was the blighter doing, camp-
ing outside his door? After all, they knew
he was a friend of the daughter of the house.

He was still wrestling with this problem
when a curious, sharp, tapping noise attracted
his attention. It came at irregular intervals
and seemed to proceed from the direction of
the window. He sat up, listening. It came
again. He crept to the window and looked
out. As he did so, something with hard
edges smote him painfully in the face.

"Oh, sorry I” said a voice.

276 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Dudley started violently. Looking in the
direction from which the voice had pro-
ceeded, he perceived that there ran out from
the wall immediately to the left of his window
a small balcony. On this balcony, bathed in
silver moonlight, Roberta Wickham was
standing. She was hauling in the slack of a
length of string, to the end of which was
attached a button-hook.

''Awfully sorry," she said. "I was trying
to attract your attention.”

"You did,” said Dudley.

"I thought you might be asleep.”

"Asleep!” Dudley’s face contorted itself
in a dreadful sneer. “Does anyone ever get
any sleep in this house? ” He leaned forward
ana lowered his voice. “I say, your bally
butler has gone off his onion.”

"What?”

" He’s doing sentinel duty outside my door
with a whacking great cannon. And when
I put my head out just now he simply barked
at me.”

"I’m afraid,” said Bobbie, gathering in the
button-hook, "he thinks you’re a burglar.”

"A burglar? But I told your mother
distinctly that I was a friend of yours.”

Something akin to embarrassment seemed
to come upon the not easily embarrassed Miss
Wickham.

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 277

"Yes, I want to talk to you about that,"
she said. "It was like this.”

"I say, when did you arrive, by the way? "
asked Dudley, the question suddenly pre-
senting itself to his disordered mind.

"About half an hour ago."

"What!”

"Yes. I sneaked in through the scullery
window. And the first thing I met was
mother in her dressing-gown.” Miss Wick-
ham shivered a little as at some unpleasing
memory. "You've never seen mother in
her dressing-gown,” she said, in a small voice.

"Yes, I have,” retorted Dudley. “And
while it may be an experience which every
chappie ought to have, let me tell you that
once is sufficient.”

"I had an accident coming down here,”
proceeded Miss Wickham, absorbed in her
own story and paying small attention to his.
"An idiot of a man driving a dray let me
run into him. My car was all smashed up.
I couldn’t get away for hours, and then I
had to come down on a train that stopped
at every station.”

It is proof, if such were needed, of the
strain to which Dudley Finch had been sub-
jected that night that the information that
this girl had been in a motor-smash did not
cause him that anguished concern which he

278 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

would undoubtedly have felt twenty-four
hours earlier. It left him almost cold.

"Well, when you saw your mother,” he
said, "didn’t you tell her that I was a friend
of yours?”

Miss Wickham hesitated.

"That’s the part I want to explain,” she
said. "You see, it was like this. First I
had to break it as gently as I could to her
that the car wasn't insured. She wasn’t
frightfully pleased And then she told me
about you and Dudley, old thing, what-

ever have you been doing since you got here?
The mater seemed to think you had been
behaving in the weirdest way.”

"I'll admit that I brought the wrong bag
and couldn't dress for dinner, but apart from
that I’m dashed if I can see what I did that
was weird.”

"Well, she seems to have become fright-
fully suspicious of you almost from the
start.”

"If you had sent that wire, telling her I
was coming ”

Miss Wickham clicked her tongue regretfully.

"I knew there was something I had for-
gotten. Oh, Dudley, I’m awfully sorry.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Dudley, bitterlv.
“It’s probably going to lead to my having
my head blown off by a looney butler, but

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 279

don’t give it another thought. You were
saying ”

"Oh, yes, when I met mother. You do
see, Dudley dear, how terribly difficult it was
for me, don't you? I mean, I had just
broken it to her that the car was all smashed
up and not insured, and then she suddenly
asked me if it was true that I had invited
you down here. I was just going to say I
had, when she began to talk about you in
such a bitter spirit that somehow the time
didn’t seem ripe. So when she asked me if
you were a friend of mine, I ”

"You said I was?”

“Well, not in so many words.”

"How do you mean?”

" I had to be awfully tactful, you see.”

"Well?”

"So I told her I had never seen you in my
life.”

Dudley uttered a sound like the breeze
sighing in the tree-tops.

"But it’s all right,” went on Miss Wickham,
reassuringly.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Dudley. "I noticed
that.”

"I'm going to go and have a talk with
Simmons and tell him he must let you escape.
Then everything will be splendid. There’s
an excellent milk-train ”

280 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"I know all about the milk-train, thanks.”

"I’ll go and see him now. So don’t you
worry, old thing.”

"Worry?” said Dudley. "Me? What
have I got to worry about? ”

Bobbie disappeared. Dudley turned away
from the window. Faint whispering made
itsgjf heard from the passage. Somebody
tapped softly on the door. Dudley opened it
and found the ambassadress standing on the
mat. Farther down the corridor, tactfully
withdrawn into the background, Simmons
the butler stood grounding arms.

"Dudley,” whispered Miss Wickham, “ have
you got any money on you? ”

“Yes, a certain amount.”

"Five pounds? It’s for Simmons.”

Dudley felt the militant spirit of the
F inches surging within him . His blood boiled .

"You don’t mean to say that after what
has happened the blighter has the crust to
expect me to tip him? ”

He glared past her at the man behind the
gun, who simpered respectfully. Evidently
Bobbie’s explanations had convinced him that
he had wronged Dudley, for the hostility
which had been so marked a short while back
had now gone out of his manner.

"Well, it’s like this, you see,” said Bobbie.
"Poor Simmons is worried.”

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 281

"I’m glad,” said Dudley, vindictively. "I
wish he would worry himself into a decline.”

"He's afraid that mother may be angry
with him when she finds that you have gone.
He doesn’t want to lose his place.”

"A man who doesn't want to get out of a
place like this must be an ass.”

"And so, in case mother does cut up rough
and dismiss him for not keeping a better watch
over you, he wants to feel that he has some-
thing in hand. He started by asking for a
tenner, but I got him down to five. So hand
it over, Dudley, dear, and then we can get
action.”

Dudley produced a five-pound note and
gazed at it with a long, lingering look of
affection and regret.

"Here you are,” he said. "I hope the man
spends it on drink, gets tight, trips over his
feet, and breaks his neck! ”

"Thanks,” said Bobbie. "There's just one
other trifling condition he made, but you
needn’t worry about that.”

‘‘What was it? ”

"Oh, just something very trifling, Nothing
fhat you have to do. No need for you to
worry at all. You had better start now tying
knots in the sheets.”

Dudley stared.

‘‘Knots?” he said. "In the sheets?”

282

MR. MULLINtR SPEAKING

"To climb down by."

It was Dudley’s guiding rule in life never,
when once he had got it brushed and brillian-
tined and properly arranged in the fashion-
able back-sweep, to touch his hair ; but on this
fearful night all the rules of civilized life were
going by the board. He clutched upwards,
collected a handful and churned it about. No
lesser gesture could have expressed his con-
sternation.

"You aren’t se.iously suggesting that I
climb out of window and shin down a
knotted sheet? ” he gasped.

"You must, I'm afraid. Simmons insists
on it.”

“Why?”

"Well "

Dudley groaned.

“I know why," he said, bitterly. "He's
been going to the movies. It's always the
way. You give a butler an evening off and
he sneaks out to a picture-house and comes
back with a diseased mind, thinking he's play-
ing a star part in The Clutching Hand or some-
thing. Knotted sheets, indeed 1” Such was
his emotion that Dudley very nearly said
"Forsooth”! "The man is simply a driv-
elling imbecile. Will you kindly inform me
why, in the name of everything infernal, the
poor, silly, dashed fish can’t just let me out

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 283

of the front door like an ordinary human
being? ”

"Why, don't you see?” reasoned Miss
Wickham. "How could he explain to
mother? She must be made to think that
you escaped in spite of his vigilance.”

Disordered though his faculties were, Dudley
could dimly see that there was something in
this. He made no further objections.
Bobbie beckoned to the waiting Simmons.
Money changed hands. The butler passed
amiably into the room to lend assistance to
the preparations.

"A little tighter, perhaps, sir,” he sug-
gested, obsequiously, casting a critical eye
upon Dudley’s knots. "It would never do
for you to fail and kill yourself, sir, ha, ha! ”

"Did you say ‘ha, ha'?” said Dudley,
in a pale voice.

"I did venture ”

"Don’t do it again.”

“Very good, sir.” The butler ambled to
the window and looked out. “ I fear the
sheets will not reach quite to the ground, sir-
You will have a drop of a few feet.”

"But,” added Bobbie, hastily, "you've got
the most lovely, soft, squashy flower-bed to
fall into.”

It was not till some minutes later, when
he had come to the end of the sheet and had

284 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

at last nerved himself to let go and complete
the journey after the fashion of a parachutist
whose parachute has refused to open, that
Dudley discovered that there was an error in
Miss Wickham’s description of the terrain.
The lovely soft flower-bed of which she had
spoken with such pretty girlish enthusiasm
was certainly there, but what she had omitted
to mention was that along it at regular
intervals were planted large bushes of a hard
and spiky nature. It was in one of these
that Dudley, descending like a shooting star,
found himself entangled: and he had never
supposed that anything that was not actually
a cactus plant could possibly have so many
and such sharp thorns.

He scrambled out and stood in the moon-
light soliloquizing softly. A head protruded
from the window above.

"Are you all right, sir? ” inquired the voice
of Simmons.

Dudley did not reply. With as much
dignity as a man punctured in several hundred
places could muster, he strode off.

He had reached the drive and was limping
up it towards the gate which led to the road
which led to the station which led to the milk-
train which led to London, when the quiet
of the night was suddenly shattered by the
roar of a gun. Something infinitely more

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 285

painful than all the thorns which had recently
pierced him smote the fleshy part of his left
leg. It seemed to be red-hot, and its effect on
Dudley was almost miraculous. A moment
before he had been slouching slowly along a
beaten and jaded man. He now appeared to
become electrified. With one sharp yell he
lowered the amateur record for the standing
broad jump, and then, starting smartly off the
mark, proceeded to try to beat the best pro-
fessional time for the hundred-yard dash.

The telephone at the side of Dudley's bed
had been ringing for some time before its
noise woke him Returning to his rooms in
Jermyn Street shortly before seven a.m., he
had quelled his great hunger with breakfast
and then slipped with a groan between the
sheets. It was now, he saw from a glance at
his watch, nearly five in the afternoon.

“Hullo?” he croaked.

“Dudley?”

It was a voice which twenty-four hours ago
would have sent sharp thrills down the young
man’s spine. Twenty-four hours ago, if he
had heard this voice on his telephone, he would
have squealed with rapture. Hearing it now,
he merely frowned. The heart beneath that
rose-pink pyjama jacket was dead.

" Yes? ” he said, coldly.

286

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Oh, Dudley,” purred Miss Wickham, "are
you all right? ”

"As far,” replied Mr. Finch, frigidly, "as a
bloke can be said to be all right whose hair has
turned white to the roots and who has been
starved and chucked out of windows into
bushes with six-inch thorns, and chivvied
and snootered and shot in the fleshy part of
the leg ”

An exclamation of concern broke in upon
his eloquence.

"Oh, Dudley, he didn’t hit you?”

"He did hit me.”

" But he promised that he wouldn't aim at
you.”

"Well, next time he goes shooting visitors,
i ell him to aim as carefully as he can. Then
they may have a sporting chance.”

"Is there anything I can do? ”

" Outside of bringing me the blighter's head
on a charger, nothing, thanks.”

"He insisted on letting off the gun. That
was the condition I said he had made. You
remember?”

" I remember. The trifling condition I
wasn't to worry about.”

" It was to make the thing seem all right to
mother.”

"I hope your mother was pleased,” said
Dudley, politely.

AWFUL GLADNESS OF THE MATER 287

"Dudley, I do wish there was something I
could do for you. I'd like to come up and
nurse you. But I'm in disgrace about the car,
and I'm not allowed to come to London just
yet. I'm 'phoning from the Wickham Arms.
I believe I shall be able to get up, though, by
Saturday week. Shall I come then? ’*

"Do,” said Dudley, cordially.

"That’s splendid! It's the seventeenth.
All right, I'll try to get to London latish in
the morning. Where shall we meet?”

"We sha’n’t meet,” said Dudley. “At
lunch-time on the seventeenth I shall be
tooling off to Australia. Good-bye!”

He hung up the receiver and crawled back
into bed, thinking imperially.

IX

0 THE PASSING OF AMBROSE

R IGHT HO,” said Algy Crufts. "Then
I shall go alone."

k “Right ho," said Ambrose Wiffin.
“Go alone."

“Right ho," said Algy Crufts. “I will."
"Right ho,” said Ambrose Wiffin. “Do.”
“Right ho, then,” said Algy Crufts.

“Right ho,” said Ambrose Wiffin.

"Right ho,” said Algy Crufts.

Few things (said Mr. Mulliner) are more
painful than an altercation between two
boyhood friends. Nevertheless, when these
occur, the conscientious narrator must record
them.

It is also, no doubt, the duty of such a
narrator to be impartial. In the present
instance, however, it would be impossible to
avoid bias. To realize that Algy Crufts was
perfectly justified in taking an even stronger
tone, one has only to learn the facts. It was

s8S

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 289

the season of the year when there comes upon
all right-thinking young men the urge to go
off to Monte Carlo: and the plan had been
that he and Ambrose should catch the ten
o’clock boat-train on the morning of the
sixteenth of February. All the arrangements
had been made — the tickets bought; the
trunks packed ; the " One Hundred Systems
of Winning At Roulette ” studied from end
to end : and here was Ambrose, on the after-
noon of February the fourteenth, calmly
saying that he proposed to remain in London
for another fortnight.

Algy Crufts eyed him narrowly. Ambrose
Wiffin was always a nattily-dressed young
man, but to-day there had crept into his
outer crust a sort of sinister effulgence which
could have but one meanmg. It shouted
from his white carnation: it shrieked from
his trouser-crease: and Algy read it in a
flash.

"You’re messing about after some beastly
female,” he said.

Ambrose Wiffin reddened and brushed his
top-hat the wrong way.

"And I know who it is. It’s that Wickham
girl.”

Ambrose reddened again, and brushed his
top-hat once more — this time the right way,
restoring the status quo.

290 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Well,” he said, "you introduced me to
her.”

"I know I did. And, if you recollect, I
drew you aside immediately afterwards and
warned you to watch your step."

"If you have anything to say against Miss
Wickham ...”

0 "I haven’t anything to say against her.
She’s one of my best pals. I’ve known young
Bobbie Wickham since she was a kid in arms,
and I’m what yea might call immune where
she's concerned. But you can take it from
me that every other fellow who comes in con-
tact with Bobbie finds himself sooner or later
up to the Adam’s apple in some ghastly mess.
She lets them down with a dull, sickening
thud. Look at Roland Attwater. He went
to stay at her place, and he had a snake with
him. ...”

"Why?”

" I don’t know. He just happened to have
a snake with him, and Bobbie put it in a
fellow’s bed and let everyone think it was
Attwater who had done it. He had to leave
by the milk-train at three in the morning.”

"Attwater had no business lugging snakes
about with him to country-houses,” said
Ambrose primly. "One can readily under-
stand how a high-spirited girl would leel
tempted . .

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 291

“And then there was Dudley Finch. She
asked him down for the night and forgot to
tell her mother he was coming, with the result
that he was taken for a Society burglar and
got shot in the leg by the butler as he was
leaving to catch the milk-train.”

A look such as Sir Galahad might have
worn on hearing gossip about Queen Guine-
vere lent a noble dignity to Ambrose Wiffin's
pink young face.

“I don't care,” he said stoutly. "She’s
the sweetest girl on earth, and I'm taking her
to the Dog Show on Saturday.”

“Eh? What about our Monte Carlo
binge? ”

“That'll have to be postponed. Not for
long. She's up in London, staying with an
aunt of sorts, for another couple of weeks. I
could come after that.”

“Do you mean to say you have the
immortal crust to expect me to hang about
for two weeks, waiting for you?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Oh, don’t you? Well, I’m jolly well not
^oing to.”

“ Right ho. Just as you like.”

“ Right ho. Then I shall go alone.”

“Right ho. Go alone.”

“Right ho. I will.”

“ Right ho. Do.”

292 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Right ho, then.”

" Right ho,” said Ambrose Wiffin.

" Right ho,” said Algy Crufts.

At almost exactly the moment when this
very distressing scene was taking place at the
Drones Club in Dover Street, Roberta Wick-
ham, in the drawing-room of her aunt Marcia’s
house in Eaton Square, was endeavouring to
reason with her mother, and finding the going
a bit heavy. Lady Wickham was notoriously
a difficult person to reason with. She was a
woman who knew her mind.

"But, mother!”

Lady Wickham advanced her forceful chin
another inch.

"It’s no use arguing, Roberta ...”

“But, mother! I keep telling you! Jane
Falconer has just rung up and wants me to
go round and help her choose the cushions
for her new flat.”

"And I keep telling you that a promise is
a promise. You voluntarily offered after
breakfast this morning to take your cousin
Wilfred and his little friend, Esmond Bates,
to the moving-pictures to-day, and you cannot
disappoint them now.”

"But if Jane’s left to herself she’ll choose
the most awful things.”

"I cannot help that.”

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 293

“She’s relying on me. She said so. And
I swore I’d go."

“I cannot help that.”

"I’d forgotten all about Wilfred.”

“I cannot help that. You should not have
forgotten. You must ring your friend up and
tell her that you are unable to see her this
afternoon. I think you ought to be glad
of the chance of giving pleasure to these two
boys. One ought not always to be thinking
of oneself. One ought to try to bring a little
sunshine into the lives of others. I will go
and tell Wilfred you are waiting for him.”

Left alone, Roberta wandered morosely to
the window and stood looking down into the
Square. From this vantage-point she was
able to observe a small boy in an Eton suit
sedulously hopping from the pavement to the
bottom step of the house and back again.
This was Esmond Bates, next door’s son and
heir, and the effect the sight of him had on
Bobbie was to drive her from the window and
send her slumping onto the sofa, where for a
space she sat, gazing before her and disliking
life. It may not seem to everybody the summit
of human pleasure to go about London choos-
ing cushions, but Bobbie had set her heart
on it: and the iron was entering deeply into
her soul when the door opened and the butler
appeared.

294 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Mr. Wiffin,” announced the butler. And
Ambrose walked in, glowing with that holy
reverential emotion which always surged over
him at the sight of Bobbie.

Usually, there was blended with this a
certain diffidence, unavoidable in one visit-
ing the shrine of a goddess: but to-day the
jgirl seemed so unaffectedly glad to see him
that diffidence vanished. He was amazed to
note how glad she was to see him. She had
bounded from the sofa on his entry, and
now was looking at him with shining eyes
like a shipwrecked mariner who sights a sail.

"Oh, Ambrose 1 ” said Bobbie. "I’m so
glad you came.”

Ambrose thrilled from his quiet but effec-
tive sock-clocks to his Stacombed hair. How
wise, he felt, he had been to spend that long
hour perfecting the minutest details of his
toilet. As a glance in the mirror on the land-
ing had just assured him, his hat was right,
his coat was right, his trousers were right,
his shoes were right, his buttonhole was
right, and his tie was right. He was one
hundred per cent., and girls appreciate such
things.

"Just thought I'd look in,” he said, speak-
ingin th e guttural tones which agitated vocal
chords always forced upon him when address-
ing the queen of her species, " and see if you

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 295

were doing anything this afternoon. If," he
added, " you see what I mean.”

" I’m taking my cousin Wilfred and a little
friend of his to the movies. Would you like
to come?”

“I say! Thanks awfully! May I?”

"Yes do:”

"I say! Thanks awfully! ” He gazed at her
with worshipping admiration. "But I say,
how frightfully kind of you to mess up an
afternoon taking a couple of kids to the
movies. Awfully kind. I mean kind. I
mean I call it dashed kind of you.”

"Oh, well!” said Bobbie modestly. "I
feel I ought to be glad of the chance of giving
pleasure to these two boys. One ought not
always to be thinking of oneself. One ought
to try to bring a little sunshine into the lives
of others.”

“You’re an angel!”

“No, no.”

"An absolute angel,” insisted Ambrose,
quivering fervently. "Doing a thing like this
is . . . well, absolutely angelic. If you
follow me. I wish Algy Crufts had been here
to see it.”

"Why Algy?”

"Because he was saying some very unpleas-
ant things about you this afternoon. Most
unpleasant things.”

296 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"What did he say?”

"He said . . Ambrose winced. The
vile words were choking him. "He said you
let people down.”

"Did he! Did he, foi sooth! I'll have to
have a word with young Algernon P. Crufts.
He’s getting above himself. He seems to
forget,” said Bobbie, a dreamy look coming
info her beautiful eyes, " that we live next
to each other in the country and that I
know which his room is. What young Algy
wants is a frog in his bed.”

"Two frogs,” amended Ambrose.

"Two frogs,” agreed Bobbie.

The door opened and there appeared on
the mat a small boy. He wore an Eton suit,
spectacles, and, low down over his prominent
ears, a bowler hat : and Ambrose thought
he had seldom seen anything fouler. He would
have looked askance at Royalty itself, had
Royalty interrupted a lete-H-tete with Miss
Wickham.

"I’m ready,” said the boy.

"This is Aunt Marcia’s son Wilfred,” said
Bobbie.

"Oh?” said Ambrose coldly.

Like so many young men, Ambrose Wiffin
was accustomed to regard small boys with a
slightly jaundiced eye. It was his simple
creed that they wanted their heads smacked.

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 297

When not having their heads smacked, they
should be out of the picture altogether. He
stared disparagingly at this specimen. A
half-formed resolve to love him for Bobbie’s
sake perished at birth. Only the thought
that Bobbie would be of the company enabled
him to endure the prospect of being seen in
public with this outstanding piece of cheese.

"Let’s go," said lire boy.

"All right," said Bobbie. "I'm ready.”

"We’ll find Old Stinker on the steps,” the
boy assured her, as one promising a deserving
person some delightful treat.

Old Stinker, discovered as predicted, seemed
to Ambrose just the sort of boy who would be
a friend of Bobbie’s cousin Wilfred. He was
goggle-eyed and freckled and also, as it
was speedily to appear, an officious little
devil who needed six of the best with a
fives-bat.

"The cab’s waiting," said Old Stinker.

"How clever of you to have found a cab,
Esmond,” said Bobbie indulgently.

"I didn’t find it. It's his cab. I told it
to wait.”

A stifled exclamation escaped Ambrose,
and he shot a fevered glance at the taxi's
clock. The sight of the figures on it caused
him a sharp pang. Not six with a fives-bat,
he felt. Ten. And of the juiciest.

298 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

"Splendid,” said Bobbie. "Hop in. Tell
him to drive to the Tivoli.”

Ambrose suppressed the words he had been
about to utter; and, climbing into the cab,
settled himself down and devoted his atten-
tion to trying to avoid the feet of Bobbie’s
cousin Wilfred, who sat opposite him. The
boy seemed as liberally equipped with these
as a centipede, and there was scarcely a mo-
ment when his boots were not rubbing the
polish off Ambrose's glittering shoes. It was
with something of the emotions of the Ten
Thousand Greeks on beholding the sea that
at long last he sighted the familiar architecture
of the Strand. Soon he would be sitting next
to Bobbie in a dimly lighted auditorium, and
a man with that in prospect could afford to
rough it a bit on the journey. He alighted
from the cab and plunged into the queue
before the box-office.

Wedged in among the crowd of pleasure-
seekers, Ambrose, though physically uncom-
fortable, felt somehow a sort of spiritual
refreshment. There is nothing a young man^
in love finds more delightful than the doing
of some knightly service for the loved one:
and, though to describe as a knightly service
the act of standing in a queue and buying
tickets for a motion-picture entertainment
may seem straining the facts a little, to

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 299

one in Ambrose’s condition a service is a
service. He would have preferred to be called
upon to save Bobbie’s life : but, this not being
at the moment feasible, it was something
to be jostling in a queue for her sake.

Nor was the action so free from peril as
might appear at first sight. Sheer, black
disaster was lying in wait for Ambrose Wiffin.
He had just forced his way to the pay-box and
was turning to leave after buying the tickets
when the thing happened. From somewhere
behind him an arm shot out, there was an
instant’s sickening suspense, and then the
top hat which he loved nearly as much as
life itself was rolling across the lobby with a
stout man in the uniform of a Czeko-Slovakian
Rear-Admireil in pursuit.

In the sharp agony of this happening, it
had seemed to Ambrose that he had experi-
enced the worse moment of his career. Then
he discovered that it was in reality merely
the worst but one. The sorrow’s crown of
sorrow was achieved an instant later when
the Admiral returned, bearing in his hand a
battered something which for a space he was
unable to recognise.

The Admiral was sympathetic. There was a
bluff, sailorly sympathy in his voice as he spoke.

"Here you are, sir,” he said. "Here’s your
rat. A little the worse for wear, this sat is, I’m

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

300

afraid, sir. A gentleman happened to step
on it. You can’t step on a nat,” he said sen-
tentiously, “not without hurting it. That
tat is not the yat it was."

Although he spoke in the easy manner of
one making genial conversation, his voice
had in it a certain purposeful note. He seemed
lite a Rear-Admiral who was waiting for
something : and Ambrose, as if urged by some
hypnotic spell, produced half-a-crown and
pressed it into his hand. Then, placing the
remains on his head, he tottered across
the lobby to join the girl he loved.

That she could ever, after seeing him in a
hat like that, come to love him in return
seemed to him at first unbelievable. Then
Hope began to steal shyly back. After all,
it was in her cause that he had suffered this
great blow. She would take that into account-
Furthermore, girls of Roberta Wickham's
fine fibre do not love a man entirely for his
hat. The trousers count, so do the spats. It
was in a spirit almost optimistic that he
forced his way through the crowd to the spot
where he had left the girl. And as he reached
it the squeaky voice of Old Stinker smote his
ear

“Golly I” said Old Stinker. “What have
you done to your hat? "

Another squeaky voice spoke. Aunt

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 301

Marcia’s son Wilfred was regarding him with
the offensive interest of a biologist examining
some lower organism under the microscope.

“I say,” said Wilfred, "I don’t know if you
know it, but somebody’s been sitting on your
hat or something. Did you ever see a hat
like that, Stinker?”

"Never in my puff,” replied his friend.

Ambrose gritted his teeth.

"Never mind my hat! Where’s Miss Wick-
ham?”

"Oh, she had to go,” said Old Stinker.

It was not for a moment that the hideous
meaning of the words really penetrated
Ambrose's consciousness. Then his jaw fell
and he stared aghast.

"Go? Go where?”

"I don’t know where. She went.”

"She said she had just remembered an
appointment,’ explained Wilfred. "She
said ...”

"... that you were to take us in and
she would join us later if she could.”

"She rather thought she wouldn’t be able
to, but she said leave her ticket at the box-
office in case.”

"She said she knew we would be all right
with you,” concluded Old Stinker. "Come
on, let’s beef in or we’ll be missing the educa-
tional two-reel comic.”

302 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Ambrose eyed them wanly. All his in-
stincts urged him to smack these two heads
as heads should be smacked, to curse a good
deal, to wash his hands of the whole business
and stride away. But Love conquers all.
Reason told him that here were two small
boys, a good deal ghastlier than any small
bqy he had yet encountered. In short, mere
smack-fodder. But Love, stronger than
reason, whispered that they were a sacred
trust. Roberta Wickham expected him to
take them to the movies and he must
do it.

And such was his love that not yet
had he begun to feel any resentment at this
desertion of hers. No doubt, he told him-
self, she had had some good reason. In any-
one a shade less divine, the act of sneaking
off and landing him with these two disease-
germs might have seemed culpable : but
what he felt at the moment was that the Queen
could do no wrong.

“ Oh, all right,” he said dully. " Push in.”

Old Stinker had not yet exhausted the
theme of the hat.

“I say,” he observed, "that hat looks pretty
rummy, you know.”

"Absolutely weird,” assented Wilfred.

Ambrose regarded them intently for a
moment, and his gloved hand twitched a

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 303

little. But the iron self-control of the Wiffins
stood him in good stead.

“Push in,” he said in a strained voice.
“Push in.”

In the last analysis, however many highly-
salaried stars its cast may contain and how-
ever superb and luxurious the settings of its
orgy-scenes, the success of a super-film’s
appeal to an audience must always depend
on what company each unit of that audience
is in when he sees it. Start wrong in the
vestibule, and entertainment in the true sense
is out of the question.

For the picture which the management of
the Tivoli was now presenting to its patrons
Hollywood had done all that Art and Money
could effect. Based on Wordsworth’s well-
known poem “ We are Seven,” it was entitled
" Where Passion Lurks,” and offered such
notable favourites of the silver screen as
Laurette Byng, G. Cecil Terwilliger, Baby
Bella, Oscar the Wonder-Poodle, and Pro-
fessor Pond's Educated Sea-Lions. And yet
it left Ambrose cold.

If only Bobbie had been at his side, how
different it all would have been. As it was,
the beauty of the story had no power to
sooth him, nor could he get the slightest
thrill out of the Babylonian Banquet scene

304 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

which had cost five hundred thousand dollars.
From start to finish he sat in a dull apathy:
then, at last, the ordeal over, he stumbled
out into daylight and the open air. Like
G. Cecil Terwilliger at a poignant crisis in
the fourth reel, he was as one on whom Life
has forced its bitter cup, and who has drained
it teethe lees.

And it was l his moment, when a strong
man stood face to face with his soul, that
Old Stinker with the rashness of Youth
selected for beginning again about the hat.

"I say,” said Old Stinker, as they came
out into the bustling Strand, " you've no
idea what a blister you look in that lid.”

"Priceless,” agreed Wilfred cordially.

"All you want is a banjo and you could
make a fortune singing comic songs outside
the pubs.”

On his first introduction to these little
fellows it had seemed to Ambrose that they
had touched the lowest possible level to which
Humanity can descend. It now became appar-
ent that there were hitherto unimagined
depths which it was in their power to plumb.
There is a point beyond which even a Wiffin’s
self-control fails to function. The next
moment, above the roar of London's traffic
there sounded the crisp note of a well-smacked
head.

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 305

It was Wilfred who, being nearest, had
received the treatment : and it was at Wilfred
that an elderly lady, pausing, pointed with
indignant horror in every waggle of her
finger-tip.

“Why did you strike that little boy?”
demanded the elderly lady.

Ambrose made no answer. He was in no
mood for Besides, to reply

fully to the question, he would have been
obliged to trace the whole history of his love,
to dilate on the agony it had caused him to
discover that his goddess had feet of clay, to
explain how little by little through the recent
entertainment there had grown a fever in his
blood, caused by this boy sucking pepper-
mints, shuffling his feet, giggling and reading
out the sub-titles. Lastly, he would have
had to discuss at length the matter of the hat.

Unequal to these things, he merely glowered :
and such was the calibre of his scowl that the
other supposed that here was the authentic
Abysmal Brute.

"I’ve a good mind to call a policeman,”
she said.

It is a peculiar phenomenon of life in
London that the magic word " policeman ”
has only to be whispered in any of its
thoroughfares to attract a crowd of sub-
stantial dimensions : and Ambrose, gazing

306 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

about him, now discovered that their little
group had been augmented by some thirty
citizens, each of whom was regarding him
in much the same way that he would have
regarded the accused in a big murder-trial
at the Old Bailey.

A passionate desire to be elsewhere came
^pon the young man. Of all things in this
life he disliked most a scene: and this was
plainly working up into a scene of the worst
kind. Seizing his sacred trusts by the elbow
he ran them across the street. The crowd
continued to stand and stare at the spot
where the incident had occurred.

ror some little time, safe on the opposite
pavement, Ambrose was too busily occupied
in reassembling his disintegrated nervous
system to give any attention to the world
about him. He was recalled to mundane
matters by a piercing squeal of ecstasy from
his young companions.

"Ool Oysters I”

"Golly! Oysters!"

And he became aware that they were stand-
ing outside a restaurant whose window was
deeply paved with these shellfish. On these
the two lads were gloating with bulging eyes.

"I could do with an oyster!” said Old
Stinker.

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 307

“So could I jolly well do with an oyster,”
said Wilfred.

"I bet I could eat more oysters than you.”

“ I bet you couldn't.”

"I bet I could.”

“I bet you couldn't.”

" I bet you a million pounds I could.”

"I bet you a million trillion pounds you
couldn't.”

Ambrose had had no intention of pre-
siding over the hideous sporting contest which
they appeared to be planning. Apart from
the nauseous idea of devouring oysters at
half-past four in the afternoon, he resented
the notion of spending any more of his money
on these gargoyles. But at this juncture he
observed, threading her way nimbly through
the traffic, the elderly lady who had made the
Scene. A Number 33 omnibus could quite
easily have got her, but through sheer care-
lessness and over-confidence failed to do so:
and now she was on the pavement and heading
in their direction. There was not an instant
to be lost.

‘Push in,” he said hoarsely. "Push

■ M

in.

A moment later, they were seated at a
table and a waiter who looked like one of the
executive staff of the Black Hand, was hover-
ing beside them with pencil and pad.

3o8 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

Ambrose made one last appeal to his
guests' better feelings.

"You can’t really want oysters at this time
of day,” he said almost pleadingly.

"I bet you we can," said Old Stinker.

"I bet you a billion pounds we can,” said
Wilfred.

"Oh, all right," said Ambrose. "Oysters.”

IJe sank back in his chair and endeavoured
to avert his eyes from the grim proceedings.
/Eons passed, and he was aware that the
golluping noises at his side had ceased. All
things end in time. Even the weariest river
winds somewhere to the sea. Wilfred and
Old Stinker had stopped eating oysters.

"Finished? ” he asked in a cold voice.

There was a moment’s pause. The boys
seemed hesitant.

"Yes, if there aren't any more.”

"There aren’t,” said Ambrose. He
beckoned to the waiter, who was leaning
against the wall dreaming of old, happy
murders of his distant youth. “Ladishion,”
he said curtly.

"Sare?”

"The bill.”

"The pill? Oh yes, sare.”

Shrill and jovial laughter greeted the
word.

“He said ' pill ’! ” gurgled Old Stinker.

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 309

•“PillT’ echoed Wilfred.

They punched each other delightedly to
signify their appreciation of this excellent
comedy. The waiter flushed darkly, mut-
tered something in his native tongue and
seemed about to reach for his stiletto. Am-
brose reddened to the eyebrows. Laughing
at waiters was simply one of the things that
aren’t done, and he felt his position acutely.
It was a relief when the Black Hander re-
turned with his change.

There was only a solitary sixpence on the
plate, and Ambrose hastened to dip in liis
pocket for further coins to supplement this.
A handsome tip would, he reasoned, show
the waiter that, though circumstances had
forced these two giggling outcasts upon him,
spiritually he had no affiliation with them.
It would be a gesture which would put him
at once on an altogether different plane.
The man would understand that, dubious
though the company might be in which he
had met him, Ambrose Wiffin himself was all
right and had a heart of gold. “ Simpatico,”
he believed these Italians called it.

And then he sat up, tingling as from an
electric shock. From pocket to pocket his
fingers flew, and in each found only empti-
ness. The awful truth was clear. An after-
noon spent in paying huge taxi-fares, buying

MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

310

seats for motion-picture performances, press-
ing half-crowns into the palms of Czeko-
Slovakian Rear-Admirals and filling small
boys with oysters had left him a financial
ruin. That sixpence was all he had to get
these two blighted boys back to Eaton
Square.

Ambrose Wiffin paused at the cross-roads.
In all his life he had never left a waiter un-
tipped. He had not supposed it could be
be done. He had looked upon the tipping
of waiters as a ''natural process, impossible
\to evade, like breathing or leaving the bottom
button of your waistcoat unfastened. Ghosts
of by-gone Wiffins — Wiffins who had scat-
tered largesse to the multitude in the Middle
Ages, Wiffins who in Regency days had flung
landlords purses of gold — seemed to crowd at
his elbow, imploring the last of their line not
to disgrace the family name. On the other
hand, sixpence would just pay for bus-fares
and remove from him the necessity of walk-
ing two miles through the streets of London
in a squashed top hat and in the society of
Wilfred and Old Stinker. . . .

If it had been Wilfred alone. ... Or
even Old Stinker alone. ... Or if that
hat did not look so extraordinarily like some-
thing off the stage of a low-class music-
hall. . . .

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 311

Ambrose Wiffin hesitated no longer.
Pocketing the sixpence with one swift motion
of the hand and breathing heavily through
his nose, he sprang to his feet.

"Come on!" he growled.

He could have betted on his little friends.
They acted just as he had expected they
would. No tact. No reticence. Not an
effort towards handling the situation. Just
two bright young children of Nature, who
said the first thing that came into their
heads, and who, he hoped, would wake
up to-morrow morning with ptomaine-
poisoning.

" I say ! ” It was Wilfred who gave tongue
first of the pair, and his clear voice rang
through the restaurant like a bugle. “You
haven’t tipped him!"

"I say I” Old Stinker chiming in, extra-
ordinarily bell-like. "Dash it all, aren’t you
going to tip him?"

"You haven’t tipped the waiter," said
Wilfred, making his meaning clearer.

"The waiter," explained Old Stinker,
clarifying the situation of its last trace of
ambiguity. "You haven’t tipped him!"

"Come on!" moaned Ambrose. “Push
out I Push out ! "

A hundred dead Wiffins shrieked a ghostly
shriek and covered their faces with their

312 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

winding sheets. A stunned waiter clutched
his napkin to his breast. And Ambrose, with
bowed head, shot out of the door like a con-
science-stricken rabbit. In that supreme
moment he even forgot that he was wearing
a top-hat like a concertina. So true is it
that the greater emotion swallows up the
less. 0

A heaven-sent omnibus stopped before him
in a traffic-block. He pushed his little charges
in, and, as they charged in their gay, boyish
way to the further end of the vehicle, seated
himself next to the door, as far away from
them as possible. Then, removing the hat,
he sat back and closed his eyes.

Hitherto, when sitting back with closed
eyes, it had always been the custom of
Ambrose Wiffin to give himself up to holy
thoughts about Bobbie. But now they re-
fused to come. Plenty of thoughts, but not
holy ones. It was as though the supply had
petered out.

Too dashed bad of the girl, he meant,
letting him in for a thing like this. Abso-
lutely too dashed bad of her. And, mark
you, she had intended from the very beginning,
mind you, to let him in for it. Oh yes, she
had. All that about suddenly remembering
an appointment, he meant to say. Perfect

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 313

rot. Wouldn’t hold water for a second. She
had never had the least intention of coming
into that bally moving-picture place. Right
from the start she had planned to lure him
into the thing and then ooze off and land him
with these peptic kids, and what he meant was
that it was tdo Hashed bad of her.

Yes, he declined to mince his words. Too
dashed bad. Not playing the game. A bit
thick. In short — well, to put it in a nut-shell,
too dashed bad.

The omnibus rolled on. Ambrose opened
his eyes in order to note progress. He was
delighted to observe that they were ^already
nearing Hyde Park Corner. At last he per-
mitted himself to breathe freely. His martyr-
dom was practically over. Only a little longer
now, only a few short minutes, and he would
be able to deliver the two pestilences F.O.B.
at their dens in Eaton Square, wash them out
of his life for ever, return to the comfort and
safety of his cosy rooms, and there begin life
anew.

The thought was heartening : and Ambrose,
greatly restored, turned to sketching out in
his mind the details of the drink which his
man, under his own personal supervision,
should mix for him immediately upon his
return. As to this he was quite clear. Many
fellows in his position — practically, you might

314 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

say, saved at last from worse than death —
would make it a stiff whisky-and-soda. But
Ambrose, though he had no prejudice against
whisky-and-soda, felt otherwise. It must be
a cocktail. The cocktail of a lifetime. A
cocktail that would ring down the ages, in
which gin blended smoothly with Italian
V^fmouth and the spot of old brandy nestled
like a trusting child against the dash of
absinthe . . .

He sat up sharply. He stared. No, his
eyes had not deceived him. At the far end
of the omnibus Trouble was rearing its ugly
head.

On occasions of great disaster it is seldom
that the spectator perceives instantly every
detail of what is toward. The thing creeps
upon him gradually, impinging itself upon
his consciousness in progressive stages. All
that the inhabitants of Pompeii, for example,
observed in the early stages of that city's
doom was probably a mere puff of smoke.
“Ah," they said, “A puff of smoke!” and
let it go at that. So with Ambrose Wiffin in
the case of which we are treating.

The first thing that attracted Ambrose’s
attention was the face of a man who had come
in at the last stop and seated himself immedi-
ately opposite Old Stinker. It was an ex-

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 315

traordinarily solemn face, spotty in parts and
bathed in a rather remarkable crimson flush.
The eyes, which were prominent, wore a fixed
far-away look. Ambrose had noted them as
they passed him. They were round, glassy
eyes. They were, briefly, the eyes of a man
who has lunched.

In the casual way in which one examines
one's fellow-passengers on an omnibus,
Ambrose had allowed his gaze to flit from
time to time to this person's face. For some
minutes its expression had remained un-
altered. The man might have been sitting
for his photograph. But now into the eyes
there was creeping a look almost of animation.
The flush had begun to deepen. For some
reason or other, it was plain, the machinery
of the brain was starting to move once more.

Ambrose watched him idly. No premoni-
tion of doom came to him. He was simply
mildly interested. And then, little by little,
there crept upon him a faint sensation of
discomfort.

The man's behaviour had now begun to
be definitely peculiar. There was only one
adjective to describe his manner, and that was
the adjective odd. Slowly he had heaved
himself up into a more rigid posture, and with
his hands on his knees was bending slightly
forward. His eyes had taken on a still

3 i6 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

glassier expression, and now with the glassi-
ness was blended horror. Unmistakable
horror. He was staring fixedly at some
object directly in front of him.

It was a white mouse. Or, rather, at
present merely the head of a white mouse.
This head, protruding from the breast-pocket
of ©Id Stinker’s jacket, was moving slowly
from side to side. Then, tiring of confine-
ment, the entire mouse left the pocket, climbed
down its proprietor’s person until it reached
his knee, and, having done a little washing
and brushing-up, twitched its whiskers and
looked across with benevolent pink eyes at
the man opposite. The latter drew a. sharp
breath, swallowed, and moved his lipc for a
moment. It seemed to Ambrose that he
was praying.

The glassy-eyed passenger was a man of
resource. Possibly this sort of thing had
happened to him before and he knew the
procedure. He now closed his eyes, kept
them closed for perhaps half a minute, then
opened them again.

The mouse was still there.

It is at moments such as this that the best
comes out in a man. You may impair it with
a series of injudicious lunches, but you can
never wholly destroy the spirit that has made
Englishmen what they are. When the hour

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 317

strikes, the old bull-dog strain will show
itself. Shakespeare noticed the same thing.
His back against the wall, an Englishman,
no matter how well he has lunched, will always
sell his life dearly.

The glassy-eyed man, as he would have been
the first to admit, had had just that couple
over the eight which make all the difference,
but he was a Briton. Whipping off his hat
and uttering a hoarse cry — possibly, though
the words could not be distinguished, that
old, heart-stirring appeal to St. George which
rang out over the fields of Agincourt and
Crecy — he leaned forward and smacked at
the mouse.

The mouse, who had seen it coming, did
the only possible thing. It side-stepped and,
slipping to the floor, went into retreat there.
And instantaneously from every side there
arose the stricken cries of women in peril.

History, dealing with the affair, will raise
its eyebrows at the conductor of the omnibus.
He was patently inadequate. He pulled a
cord, stopped the vehicle, and, advancing into
the interior, said ‘"Ere!” Napoleon might
just as well have said ‘"Ere!” at the battle
of Waterloo. Forces far beyond the control
of mere words had been unchained. Old
Stinker was kicking the glassy-eyed passen-
ger’s shin. The glassy-eyed man was pro-

3 18 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

testing that he was a gentleman. Three women
were endeavouring to get through an exit
planned by the omnibus’s architect to accom-
modate but one traveller alone.

And then a massive, uniformed figure was
in their midst.

“Wot’s this?”

Ambrose waited no longer. He had had
sufficient. Edging round the newcomer, he
dropped from the omnibus and with swift
strides vanished into the darkness.

The morning of February the fifteenth came
murkily to London in a mantle of fog. It
found Ambrose Wiffin breakfasting in bed.
On the tray before him was a letter. The
handwriting was the handwriting that once
he had loved, but now it left him cold. His
heart was dead, he regarded the opposite
sex as a wash-out, and letters from Bobbie
Wickham could stir no chord.

He had already perused this letter, but now
he took it up once more and, his lips curved
in a bitter smile, ran his eyes over it again,
noting some of its high spots.

”... very disappointed in you . . . can-
not understand how you could have behaved in
such an extraordinary way ...”

Hal

THE PASSING OF AMBROSE 319

"... did think I could have trusted you
to look after ... And then you go and leave
the poor little fellows alone in the middle of
London ..."

Oh, ha, ha!

"... Wilfred arrived home in charge of a
policeman, and Mother is furious. I don't
think I have ever seen her so pre-War . . .”

Ambrose Wiffin threw the letter down and
picked up the telephone.

" Hullo.”

"Hullo.”

“Algy?”

"Yes. Who’s that?”

"Ambrose Wiffin.”

"Oh? What ho!”

"What ho!”

"What ho!”

"What ho - ”

"I say,” said Algy Crufts, “What became
of you yesterday afternoon? I kept trying
to get you on the ’phone and you were out.”

“Sorry,” said Ambrose Wiffin. "I was
taking a couple of kids to the movies.”

“What on earth for?”

"Oh, well, one likes to get the chance of
giving a little pleasure to people, don't you

320 MR. MULLINER SPEAKING

know. One ought not always to be thinking
of oneself. One ought to try to bring a little
sunshine into the lives of others.”

"I suppose,” said Algy sceptically, “that
as a matter of fact, young Bobbie Wickham
was with you, too, and you held her bally
h?nd all the time.”

"Nothing of the kind,” replied Ambrose
Wiffin with dignity. "Miss Wickham was
not among those present. What were you
trying to get me on the 'phone about yester-
day? ”

“To ask you not to be a chump and stay
hanging around London in this beastly
weather. Ambrose, old bird, you simply
must come to-morrow.”

"Algy, old cork, I was just going to ring
you up to say I would.”

"You were?”

"Absolutely.”.

"Great work! Sound egg! Right ho,
then. I'll meet you under the clock at Charing
Cross at half-past nine.”

"Right ho. I'll be there."

"Right ho. Under the clock.”

"Right ho. The good old clock.”

"Right ho,” said Algy Crufts.

"Right ho.” said Ambrose Wiffin.

THE END